Book Three: An Unexpected Friend
by RussetDivinity
Summary: Rose and Scorpius have found themselves becoming friends rather than enemies, and life goes on at Hogwarts. Rose develops a crush on a bold Gryffindor fourth year, and Scorpius finds that he is more than just a Malfoy. All is not well, however, as danger posed to other worlds begins to threaten Hogwarts.
1. Under the Moon

Rose's third year at Hogwarts started much as the first two had. Hugo was anxious to go with her, and she had to remind him that he only had one more year to wait, and then both he and Lily could be sorted. Her parents hugged her and told her not to get into too much trouble – she had told them some, but not all, of what had happened the previous year – and she promised she'd be careful, though her father did whisper that if she got into any more adventures, she'd have to tell them absolutely everything.

"Our glory days are over," he told her. "Let us live vicariously through you just a little, all right?"

"Okay," Rose said with a laugh, as her mother elbowed him gently in the ribs. "See you at Christmas!" she called as the train blew its whistle, and along with everyone else, she ran to board it and make sure she could find a compartment with her friends.

Ruby had grown still more over summer, and though Rose had outgrown all her clothes from last year, she had the feeling that she wasn't going to be growing much more. Right now her chin reached Ruby's shoulder, and as they hugged in greeting, Ruby gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Rose had almost forgotten the butterflies in her stomach from the last kiss, and she was sure her grin wasn't just from seeing her old friend again.

"How was your summer?" Ruby asked as she pulled Rose into a compartment where Albus and Scorpius had already joined them. "And don't tell me about James and Lujayn snogging in every spare corner they could find, because Albus already mentioned that. Tell me about what _you _did."

"Not much," Rose said. "Mom wouldn't let me go out too far because she said I'd been reckless last year."

"You were," Albus butted in, and Scorpius nodded, but Rose silenced them both with a look.

"But I still managed to have some fun. I brushed up on some third year spells, and Mom let me read all her old textbooks." Some of the information was a little out of date, but that was mostly for the Muggle Studies book, and Rose hadn't signed up for that class, even if some of the older students insisted it was more accurate than it used to be. If she was going to learn about the Muggle world, she would learn about it from Ruby. The other books were good, though, and some were even the ones she needed for her other classes.

"And we got to hang out with Uncle Charlie," Albus said. "All the married couples went off on some vacation from kids."

"It's not like we're that bad," Rose said. Of course, her mother did sometimes get a bit frazzled when she had to keep an eye on all of the Potter-Granger-Weasley clan (as they called themselves), but they weren't nearly as bad as they had been when they were younger.

"What about you, Scorpius?" Ruby asked, before Albus and Rose could chatter away through the whole train ride about what their summer had been like. Rose fell silent, knowing full well that, if given the chance, she and Albus might well do just that, and would have even if neither of the others had been there, or if everyone in the compartment had been at the Burrow with them that summer. "What was your summer like?"

"It was all right," Scorpius said, glancing shyly at his hands. He had grown a bit too, though he still looked kind of like a kid. "Kind of quiet, though. I mostly just spent time with my family and got some studying done." He looked up and met Ruby's gaze. "What about you?"

And then, as though she had been waiting for that moment since the train had started, Ruby launched into a story about how she and her family had gone on a tour of the British Isles, from Wales to Scotland to Ireland, spending a month in each different country. "I just wish we could have spent more time up north," Ruby said, once she had rattled off everything she'd seen and done. "There were people there with hair almost as red as Rose's."

The train rolled into the Hogsmeade station that night as it always did, and the three of them poured out, laughing and showing off their signed permission slips to each other. Ruby was the only one who'd had to beg her parents to sign it; the other three had parents with fond memories of the little village, and they had signed without a second thought. They followed the rest of the students to the carriages drawn by Thestrals and got in one with a fourth year Gryffindor who was making little butterflies appear at the tip of his wand. He smiled at them as they entered, and Rose gave him a cheerful grin back.

"You're Watson, right?" she asked.

"Thomas Watson, yeah," he said, nodding at her. "I really don't need to ask who you are, Miss Granger-Weasley."

"It's Rose," she said. "Granger-Weasley's too long and unwieldy. I've already told my brother to pick one name and stick with it so he doesn't have to deal with what I've had to."

"It's distinguished, though," Thomas said. "Granger-Weasley's a name with history now, like…" His gaze flicked over the other three third years in the carriage. "Like Potter, I guess. People know you."

"Or like Malfoy," Scorpius said, but he spoke so quietly that Rose wasn't sure Thomas would be able to hear him, and maybe that was the point. His gaze was fixed on the window, watching the dark landscape roll by, rocking slightly with the movement of the carriage. She set a hand on his shoulder, and he leaned against her a little, but that could have just been the fact that the carriage tilted at just the right moment.

The scent of cinnamon was overwhelming for a moment, and Rose realized that a red-brown butterfly had settled on her shoulder. When she waved it away, it left a stain on her robe, and on touching the stain and furtively licking her finger, she found that it was made up of the spice. "How did you do that?" she asked.

Thomas held a small chain close to his chest, and said, with surprising determination, "Not now. I'll tell you some other time."

"When?" Rose asked. She didn't care how bold and sharp she was being. Anyone who kept secrets from her was annoying, and she wouldn't let Thomas get away with it, even if he was a year older than her. "Tomorrow?"

"Maybe when you don't have the newest star of the Slytherin Quidditch team treating you like a pillow," Thomas said with a grin, and Scorpius's cheeks grew pink.

"Lay off," Rose snapped, and Thomas blinked, taken aback. "He's my friend, got it? If you have a problem with him, then you might as well not bother showing me how you make those butterflies. I bet I can find out just as well on my own. I'm perfectly skilled at using the library."

Thomas's shocked expression faded quickly, and he smiled again. "I didn't mean any offense by it. Sorry, Malfoy. I'd just rather keep our rivalry going, that's all. It's a lot more fun to play Quidditch when it feels like there are stakes." The carriage stopped, and Thomas was the first one out. "See you on the pitch, Malfoy. You too, Potter." With a wave, he headed off to the castle, with the four of them climbing out after.

"I didn't really expect him to notice me," Ruby said, though she sounded a little bitter. "I mean, I know some people care about Quidditch, and I'm just some younger Ravenclaw."

"I'll sort him out in the common room," Rose said. It was about time she had someone to duel, even if it was only a practice for when she would duel Scorpius in their seventh year. Once the thought had struck her, she hadn't given up on it, and now she was more devoted to it than ever. She just had to tell him about it sometime.

"You'd better," Ruby said, but then she ran off to greet some other Ravenclaws, and Rose was left with Scorpius and Albus.

"Did you mean that?" Scorpius asked quietly. "That I'm your friend?"

"Sure," Rose said. "Why wouldn't I?"

"It's just that we're rivals, and I know we got along last year, but that was just because of Albus and Ruby, and if you didn't want to spend more time with me than you have to, I'd understand." His eyes were downcast, and he spoke quickly, as though wanting the words to be gone as quickly as possible. Rose cut him off with a gentle elbow to the ribs, and he looked up, startled.

"You're my friend, okay? I did say that partly to put that jerk in his place, but that wasn't the only reason. So cheer up, and don't forget that we're going to spend time in the library together." She frowned at him. "Last year you were perfectly happy to spend time with me. What happened?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess it's just the summer. It's a little weird to remember that I've got friends."

"Well, you do." Rose elbowed him again, and this time he smiled. "I'm going to go find some food. See you around!" With a wave, she ran off to the Gryffindor table and made sure to find a spot pointedly far away from Thomas Watson. She'd show him.

* * *

><p>The first week was a rush of trying to get used to everything. The professors had been right; this year was very different and much harder than her second year had been. She had her normal classes – Charms, Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, History of Magic, and Defense Against the Dark Arts – but there were also the classes she had signed up to take at the end of her second year. She got into Care of Magical Creatures with Albus, which made a fox-faced Ravenclaw third year incredibly jealous, as she had wound up in Divination. Rose also made it into Arithmancy with Ruby and Scorpius.<p>

As soon as she could, Rose cornered the other three and found out what they had gotten into. Albus, it turned out, was also in Muggle Studies with Ruby, while Scorpius had gone for Ancient Runes. He didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that he would likely be spending hours with books, and Rose even felt a bit envious and decided to nick some of the books for his class, if only for a few hours at a time.

Having eight classes to deal with, along with trying to stay ahead of Scorpius (and everyone else for that matter) and doing her own research with the group was tiring, and more often than not, Rose went to bed completely exhausted. She wasn't sure where Scorpius would find the energy to also go to Quidditch practices, and if it weren't for the fact that that would give her a slight edge, she would have pitied him. As it was, she just felt a bit bad about taking advantage of that edge.

She wasn't so tired that she would sleep deeply, though, and one night in the second week of September, she woke to the sound of someone knocking on the window to her dormitory. The knocking continued even after she rolled onto her other side, and so she got out of bed, wrapped a dressing robe around herself, and yawned as she walked to the window, thinking that whoever was out there would get a good hexing for waking her up.

When she saw that it was Thomas Watson, she only wanted to hex him all the more.

"Hey, Granger-Weasley," he said with a grin as she opened the window. He sat on a broom and held another in his hand. "Care for a ride?"

"Why are you doing this, Watson?" she asked, but it was hard to resist the thought of a late night ride. The cool air had already woken her up, and she clambered onto the windowsill. Thomas held the broom steady for her until she had climbed on, and then they took off together, swooping around the towers of Hogwarts.

It was a beautiful night, with hundreds of stars and a large full moon shining down on the grounds, illuminating them in an eerie, ethereal light. The lake was still and black, with only a few ripples that might have been nocturnal fish or even the giant squid patrolling near the surface.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked again, but then Thomas led her in a dive over the lake, so close that she had to tuck her feet up to keep her toes from skimming the waters. Thomas didn't seem to care about whether he got his feet wet or not, for he ducked them below the surface, and the spray splashed up above his knees. He threw back his head in a laugh before rising, and Rose followed him up, spiraling like two eagles in a reverse mating flight.

They went all the way across the lake and back, then over the Forbidden Forest a ways, and finally over the castle again, to the Quidditch pitch, which they circled twice before perching on top of Gryffindor Tower.

"Now are you going to tell me?" she asked once they had landed. Thomas sat with his legs dangling over the edge, and Rose joined him, though she felt a bit nervous about the thought of falling. Of course, she still had her broom clutched in her hand, so she knew she could catch herself, and she could probably do it before Thomas bothered to try. If he bothered to try. The jerk.

"Tell you what?" he asked, with that insufferable grin.

"Why we're doing this," Rose said, resisting the urge to slap the back of his head, the way she had used to do with James before he got his growth spurt. "Why did you drag me out of my bed in the middle of the night?"

"Would you rather still be asleep?" he asked.

"Maybe." Her bed had been very comfortable, and she had an essay to turn in the next day that had worn her out because she had put it off until the last minute.

"Tell me the truth," Thomas said, and he scooted a bit closer to her. "After everything that you've seen tonight, after flying over the grounds and looking down at the castle and everyone in it as though they were the smallest things on the world, would you rather be asleep?"

Rose leaned forward and looked down. The first things she saw, of course, were her bare feet with her roughly-clipped toenails, and she wiggled her toes before peering further.

They were higher up than she had ever been, and beneath her – all around her, even – was the castle, the place she would call home for the next several weeks, until Christmas started and she was off to the Burrow again. She was perched above it like a lioness surveying her lands, and she grinned, remembering that it was the lionesses who did the hunting while the lions lazed about.

"No," she said. "I'd rather have seen this."

"I can take you further," he said, and before she could say anything, he added, "further from the castle, I mean. I wasn't going to kiss you or anything, unless you want me to. I'm not trying to hit on you or anything. I just think you're interesting and I want to spend time with you. If we can spend time together in the sky, that's even better. I'll show you the butterflies, too, but not tonight. Some other night, probably."

"I'd like that," Rose said.

"Like what? The flying? The butterflies? The… kissing?" He looked so dumbfounded that Rose had to laugh, and on an impulse, she leaned over and kissed his cheek.

"Any of them, really," she said. "But mostly the flying and the butterflies. Can we arrange those sometime?"

"Yeah!" Thomas said with a grin. "Sometime soon, right? There's a river that leads into the lake, and I've never gone all the way down it, but maybe this year we can go together. Would you like that? Maybe we can find out where the lake comes from. Sound like a plan?"

"Count on it, Watson," she said. "You know where to find me." With a wink, she leaned forward and toppled off the tower.

There was a moment when she thought she wouldn't be able to catch herself, and she heard Thomas's shout, but then she had the broom beneath her and was rising, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. When she returned to the level of the tower, Thomas was standing, holding his broom and looking as though he had been about to leap off and rescue her from certain death.

"I do my own rescuing, Watson," she said, "and I'm holding onto the broom, if it's all right with you." With another grin and wink, she circled Gryffindor Tower before flying through the window into her dormitory.

It had been a foolish thing for her to do, but as she closed the window and walked back to her bed on shaking legs, she found herself grinning. That was the most fun she'd had since the pirates left, and she couldn't wait to do it again. No one seemed to have woken, and so she stuck her broom under her bed, dropped her robe onto her trunk to put away in the morning, and nestled into her blankets.

If things went as well as they were going now, then her third year at Hogwarts would be her best year yet.


	2. Slytherin House

Year by year, more students had come into Slytherin. Of course Scorpius had only his own brief experience to illustrate that, as just about everyone else had either forgotten how many came into the house in previous years or claimed to have forgotten to get him to stop asking. He thought the former more likely, both because he didn't want to think that his housemates saw him as nothing more than a pestering annoyance and because he didn't remember how many Slytherin first years there had been when he was sorted. They hadn't been a particularly tight-knit bunch, and a fair number of them had tried to find friends outside of Slytherin. He and Albus were the only two that had stuck together, and even though he shared most of his classes with his fellow Slytherin third years, he doubted he knew very much about any of them.

During his second year, he had paid some attention, but only a little. After all, neither he nor Albus knew any of the coming first years, and he suspected they would be the same as his own first years had been: eager to distance themselves from the idea of being Slytherins. He couldn't blame them, since even though his father had assured him that there was no shame in being a Slytherin, he still felt as though people were watching him cautiously.

"It's really not fair at all," he told Albus as they settled down to watch the sorting. The first years looked even smaller than they had the year before, though Scorpius supposed that could just be because of the two inches he'd grown over summer.

"What's not?" Albus looked as though he was barely listening and had become anxious for the sorting to start. Scorpius couldn't blame him; they had eaten plenty of sweets on the train, but those weren't nearly as filling as dinner would be, and already he could feel hunger starting to hollow out his stomach. He would keep talking, though, and hope his friend would start to listen.

"Everything about Slytherin," Scorpius said and Professor Zahradnik got to her feet to read aloud the names. "I mean, doesn't it just seem evil from the start? Even before you think of how many Death Eaters were in it in our parents' generation, and in their parents' generation. Even before you think of…" He knew he didn't have to, but he still shuddered a little with fear and revulsion before going on in a whisper, "Voldemort."

"Okay," Albus said. The Sorting Hat was set on its stool, and Professor Zahradnik unrolled a scroll of paper.

"It seems almost like it's been evil from the start," Scorpius went on, lowering his voice after a fourth year hissed at him to be quiet. "Salazar Slytherin!"

Professor Zahradnik cleared her throat and called out, "Anemi, Barbara!" A dark-haired girl stumbled up to the stool and was pronounced a Slytherin. As she ran over to the Slytherin table, she looked almost as though she was about to cry.

"He was a blood supremacist, and that may not have been entirely evil back in the day, it certainly is now, and the house still has that connotation, even after it's had half-bloods and possibly even a few Muggle-borns in it." Scorpius did his best to tune out Professor Zahradnik and the Sorting Hat, but he still caught a few names.

"Beck, James!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"He argued with Godric Gryffindor, who's apparently the most heroic man possible. It'd be like arguing with… arguing with your father! Salazar Slytherin was more evil than Cornelius Fudge." Albus smirked at that, which gave Scorpius the encouragement to go on, even though one of the older students was glaring at him.

"Brown, Theodore!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

A shaking boy, who must have been almost twelve already, walked up to the table and sat down as Scorpius continued, "And then there's the Chamber of Secrets. It's a name that sounds evil from the start, because as everyone knows, good guys don't keep secrets unless it's to protect others, and even then, they might tell them what they want to know just because they don't like keeping secrets. Secrets are for evil."

"Davis, Dorothy!"

"SLYTHERIN!"

"And what did it have inside? A snake. A giant snake that can kill with a look and was meant to go specifically after Muggle-borns." Scorpius's throat felt a bit tight thinking about this, as he knew that his father could well have been involved with that and had wanted to be, but he shook away the thought. There was so much more he still had to say.

"Eccleston, James!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Our symbol's a snake, too. And snakes are just about the ultimate evil, aren't they? Is there any mythology where snakes are considered good. Well, all right, Australia has the Rainbow Serpent, and there's Quetzalcoatl, but here in Britain, snakes are basically the devil, at least from a Biblical point of view. Why else would people say that a saint drove them out of Ireland? Why else would there have been a serpent in the Garden of Eden?"

"Necchi, Fatima!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"So we've got a snake for our emblem, and the evilest founder. Is it any wonder that people think we're terrible? Is it any wonder that people are surprised when Professor Baumhauer, one of the kindest men I know, is our Head of House?" Albus looked slightly disturbed, but Scorpius knew he had to push on. He couldn't give up in trying to understand what was happening. "So why?"

Albus turned to him. "Are you asking me?"

"Your opinion, at least," Scorpius said. "I'd like to know if you have any thoughts about why this is."

Albus shrugged. "Do we have to go over this right now? I mean, the sorting's almost over, and we're going to have dinner soon, and I've been wanting that since we got into the carriage. Why is this so important to you?"

"Because I'm not evil!" The words came out louder than Scorpius had intended, and a few people turned to glare at him, but he paid them no mind. He needed them to be said, needed them to be heard by someone who wasn't a Malfoy. His mother would only try to reassure him, and his father would say that it wasn't a name that made him evil, but they didn't have to deal with having people whisper about their names and thinking they were terrible just because they were in Slytherin. "I'm not," he said, his voice lower, and this time Albus wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

"I know," Albus said. "I'm not evil either. I don't think any of the first years are evil, or any of the second years either. I don't think there's anyone evil in Slytherin, though there are some that I don't like."

Scorpius nodded. "Why, then? There has to be some reason."

"I think it's just because of the sorting," Albus said. "There are four things the hat looks for, right? Bravery, intelligence, hard work, and ambition. Of all those things, I guess ambition is the easiest to make evil. You have to actually have some ambition to take over the world."

Scorpius laughed a little and sat up. "You're right," he said. "I guess we just have to show that ambition can be good."

"Exactly," Albus said, "but not now." Professor Zahradnik must have given her speech while they were whispering, for she sat down and food appeared on the golden platters. Both Albus and Scorpius loaded their plates with everything they could reach, and Albus dug in at once. Scorpius's appetite had faded, but he still ate about half of what was on his plate before turning to Albus again.

"Do you think there are more Slytherins now than there were last year?" he asked.

"I don't know," Albus said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes covered in gravy. He swallowed and took a gulp of pumpkin juice before adding, "I don't think so."

"But there were a lot of first years who got sorted into Slytherin," Scorpius said. "I wasn't counting, but I did hear the Sorting Hat shouting 'SLYTHERIN' a lot. Maybe the house isn't so bad that people are asking to not be put in it."

"I wouldn't count on it," said one of their fellow third years, and after a moment, Scorpius remembered the girl's name as Lunete Pritchard, a Welsh girl who routinely colored her hair purple with various homemade potions. "Little Barbara Anemi's still crying."

They all looked down the table to where Barbara had sat down and saw her being comforted by another third year, Russell Jameson.

"The hat didn't sort that many people into Slytherin," Albus said once they had finished staring at the girl. "There are a lot more in the other houses. You just weren't listening when it shouted out the other names."

Scorpius's cheeks grew warm, and he knew it was true that he hadn't been listening. He had thought that meant he would miss hearing several different Slytherins, but apparently it also meant he had missed hearing just about every other house. As he looked across the Great Hall, he saw that the other three tables were packed with people cheerfully eating and laughing with their friends. While the Slytherin table was far from empty, compared to the other three, it was sparse and somber. "There have to have been more," he said, though he was no longer completely convinced that he was right. "Something's changing, I know it. Professor Zahradnik said that the hat's been acting oddly lately, and I'm going to find out."

"Good luck," Lunete muttered as she returned to her mincemeat pie. "Doing that plus eight classes sounds like something only Granger-Weasley down there would do." She flicked her head in the direction of the Gryffindor table, and Scorpius saw Rose sitting next to a bronze-skinned boy and laughing with him.

"Well, I can do it too," Scorpius said, "and I bet I can do it better than she can." He wouldn't mind getting her help on it, but now that it was a challenge, he suddenly wanted to do it all by himself.

"I can help," Albus said eagerly. "I'll probably have a lot of work to do for Care of Magical Creatures and Muggle Studies, but I'll help when I can." He took a large bite of carrot before adding, "What did you get into?"

"Divination and Arithmancy," Lunete said before Scorpius could answer. "Where did you learn to eat? I don't think I've met anyone else my age who doesn't bother chewing and swallowing before eating." She took another bite of pie, chewed, swallowed, and said, "See?"

"It's the first night back," Albus said. "No one cares about table manners. We're all too hungry."

Lunete rolled her eyes and returned to her meal.

"So," Albus said when Lunete's attention was off them. "What did you get into?"

"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes," Scorpius said. "I'll be spending a lot of time in the library already, so I might as well get some history done on reading. I doubt I'll learn much of anything interesting from Professor Binns's class."

"I heard a rumor that we'd get a new History of Magic professor," Albus said. "He's an old man, but he's a werewolf, and apparently he's completely blind." When everyone around him looked at him skeptically, he just shrugged and returned to his food. "I didn't believe it either," he muttered. "I just thought it'd be nice to have someone besides Binns."

"We all think that," a fifth year said. "That doesn't mean it'll happen. Binns has the best job protection: he can't ever die and be forced out."

As always, Scorpius felt stuffed after dinner, but as always, he found room for some dessert. He ate a little more than he might have normally, to be polite to the house-elves, and as the dishes cleared themselves away and the fifth year who had been complaining about Binns revealed herself to be a Prefect and called the first years to her, Scorpius was very glad he didn't have to go up any stairs. If he had been sorted into Ravenclaw – which was infinitely more likely than Gryffindor – he would have probably tried to find an abandoned classroom to sleep in rather than dragging himself up to the tower.

The common room was exactly the same as it had always been, but looking around it now sent shivers up Scorpius's spine. Over the past two years he had come to see this place as something of a second home (since it was far less comfortable to sleep in the library), but now, he tried looking at it with the eyes of someone who had never seen it before, and only one word came to mind.

Evil.

It was close to the water, and underground, even deeper than the Hufflepuff common room, and all the lights seemed cold and eerie. It was the sort of place he wouldn't want to wake up after sleepwalking or from the middle of a bad dream. It had become comforting, but that was only because he had gotten used to it. As a stranger, he would have been terrified.

His sleepiness from the food was gone, and he grabbed Albus's arm. "What's the matter?" Albus mumbled.

"Look around," Scorpius whispered, pulling Albus away from the rest of the group. No one seemed to notice that they had left, but Scorpius supposed it hardly mattered. "What do you see?"

"It's the common room," Albus said with a yawn. "It doesn't look any different from how it did last year. What's wrong with you, Scorpius?"

"I don't know." Scorpius let go of his friend's arm, and with another yawn, Albus headed to their dormitory. Once everyone had filed into their own dormitories, Scorpius sank onto a nearby couch and rested his head on the arm. He was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. His mind was too busy racing, and he was almost afraid that if he closed his eyes he would lose all the thoughts he had been trying to put in order.

The couch beneath him was green, and he wondered if green was an evil color. It was associated with snakes and envy, and there was something sinister about green light and greenish complexions, but it was also the color of life and growth, both of which were normally considered good. Then there was silver. It was the coldest of all the metallic colors used at Hogwarts, and something about the combination of green and silver seemed distant, possibly even other. It was like Slytherin was meant to hold itself above the other houses.

He sighed, and his eyes slid closed. Though he still wanted to think things over, he wasn't sure how much he could accomplish without studying, and he was much too tired to go to the library right now. He didn't even know if it would be open so late on the first night back. It would have to be open the next day, though, and he knew he would wind up visiting it, as he knew nothing about runes aside from what he had read in the textbook over summer while trying not to spend too much time with his family.

He wasn't sure what it was that made him want to avoid his parents. He knew he hadn't disappointed them, and he knew they were proud of him and loved him, but he was worried about something. Maybe it was just how cold their home could be, as cold as green and silver.

* * *

><p>Scorpius woke to a hand shaking his shoulder and a common room that was slightly lighter than it had been the previous night. "What's going on?" he mumbled, sitting up and finding that he was still on the couch.<p>

"You've got twenty minutes to get to Transfiguration," Albus said. "I grabbed some clothes for you, and everyone else is already out, so you can change in here if you want. You'd better make it quick, though. I don't want a lecture about how we should know better than to be late."

Scorpius sat up and began changing into the clothes Albus had brought him, sticking the ones from the day before under the couch. They would likely still be there when he returned – no one bothered looking under the couch for anything – so he could move them after class. "Is there anything still in the Great Hall?" he asked, haste making him alert, though he still felt a bit fuzzy.

"I grabbed some food, too," Albus said, and he pulled two scones out of his bag. "Sorry I couldn't grab more, but I wasn't sure how to carry bacon or jam."

"It's fine," Scorpius said, and stuffed one of the scones in his mouth. It could have used some jam, or at least something to drink alongside it, but he would have to manage with a dry throat. "Thanks," he said, and a few crumbs flicked from his mouth.

"And I got your books." Albus thrust a bag at him, and Scorpius slung it over his shoulder. "Come on. You can finish eating on the way."

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Scorpius asked as they ran out of the common room and sprinted up the stairs toward their Transfiguration class.

"We're friends," Albus said. "It's what friends do. You'd help me out the same way, right?"

"Of course," Scorpius said at once. He finished off his first scone and at once tore into the second. He didn't want to be caught eating on the first day of class, and he certainly didn't want to get a detention on his first day.

"And I'll help you study that history thing, too," Albus said. "Sorry I was so annoyed with you the other night."

"It's no problem," Scorpius said, and he sped up.


	3. Traveling

Rose found that her second favorite class, by far, was Care of Magical Creatures, and not just because it was taught by Rubeus Hagrid, who was fond of all his students but particularly her and Albus. She loved it because there were so many different creatures to learn about, and so many fascinating things for her to see. Just as in her father's third year, the first creature was hippogriffs, and Rose calmly strode up to one and looked it square in the eye before bowing. It bowed again, but she declined the offer to ride, as did almost everyone else in the class. The one person who did take a quick little trip up and in a small circle was a Hufflepuff named Zeus van Agteren, of all things, and for the rest of the month, whenever anyone saw him, they would make some joke about him being a god. Rose was sure hers were the cleverest, but that went without saying.

Her favorite class was still Herbology, and she liked it now more than ever because they were starting to work with the really dangerous plants. They still took it paired with the Slytherins, and Rose almost always found herself working with Albus, though there were a few times when she worked with Scorpius, and together they always did better than any other pairing.

"This doesn't mean our rivalry's off," she told him at the end of the first week, as they went over to the fountains to wash dirt off their hands. They had just finished working with the Funeral Thistle, though Longbottom had assured them that it was a misnomer, and pricking their fingers on the leaves would only lead to a dizzy spell and some mild numbness. One Slytherin girl had been sent to the Hospital Wing because, after someone accidentally bumped into her and caused her to prick her finger, she pricked it again but didn't notice until nearly fainting.

"I hadn't thought it would," Scorpius said. "But we'll be friendly rivals this time, right?"

"Of course." The water was cold, and though Rose's fingers hadn't been numb after working with the Funeral Thistle, they were nearly so after the deluge. She dried them quickly and used a mild Warming Charm on her hands, then on Scorpius's once he was done.

"Thanks," he said. "Want to walk to Arithmancy with me?"

"I might as well," she said, and once they had grabbed their bags, they headed off toward the Arithmancy classroom, with the various other Gryffindors and Slytherins who had signed up for that class. It was mostly Ravenclaws, of course, and Rose looked forward to seeing Ruby again. The three of them would probably wind up all sitting together, as they usually did, but only if they moved quickly enough to find two desks near Ruby's.

It was a friendly rivalry, she realized, as they took the stairs up to the third floor two at a time. In fact, it felt so friendly that it was hardly a rivalry at all. She still wanted to beat Scorpius in every class, but that was more because she knew she could and to do anything less would be to let herself down than because he was some sort of academic enemy. She didn't know why he kept it up, aside from perhaps that he was ambitious enough to want to beat her in everything. He was in Slytherin, after all, so he needed to have some sort of ambition.

Besides, there were other things in her life besides the rivalry. Her studying in the library with Scorpius, Ruby, and Albus was more out of academic curiosity than from the rivalry, and when she spent time with Thomas Watson, it wasn't out of some need to show up Scorpius. How could it be? They weren't doing anything except flying around at night and looking at the grounds of Hogwarts.

Their nights always started out the same. Rose would get a few hours of sleep, but then a knocking at her window would wake her. She would leap out of bed, throw a robe around herself, and grab her broom before racing to the window and flinging it open. Thomas would be waiting there, and they would exchange a quick greeting before she would leap out the window and catch herself on her broom. He still looked nervous when she did it, but she was getting better, and sometimes she would let herself fall several feet before even trying to get the broom underneath her, just to see if she could.

"Why are you so reckless, Granger-Weasley?" he asked one night in late September, when she had waited a particularly long time before swinging astride her broom and rising up to meet him. He still insisted on calling her by her surname, and she had given up on asking him to call her Rose.

"I'm a Gryffindor," she said. "We're meant to be reckless. It's in our nature."

Thomas only smiled a little and shook his head. "I guess I'm a poor excuse for a Gryffindor, then."

"Well, it's just one way of showing our nature," Rose said, and she made her broom roll over while she clung to it with her knees and hands. "There are all sorts of bravery. Like Longbottom. He's got that quiet sort of courage."

"And you've got the loud, brash kind," Thomas said with a grin. "Come on. I want to show you the mouth of the river tonight." He sped off, and Rose raced after him, flattening herself against her broom both to urge it on faster and to reduce the drag formed by her body. When she had caught up, she slowed just enough to keep pace, and they flew over the dark lake, not stopping until Thomas went into a dive. Rose went after him, wind whipping past her face, and she decided this was better than playing Quidditch ever could be. Here, she wasn't stuck inside a stadium.

The mouth of the river was wide, like one that would flow into the sea, but it didn't have the sort of sandy delta that Rose was used to seeing in photographs. Instead, it was simply dark, and she wondered how deep it went and whether the giant squid could have at one time come through it and grown too large to leave again. But the river wouldn't have come from the sea, so the squid would have had to go up another river and then into this one. How could it have survived the shift from salt water to fresh water, and how was it still alive now?

Rose barely noticed that she was drifting toward the ground until her slippers touched down, and she got off her broom to walk up to the edge of the river. Thomas joined her, saying, "I knew you'd be interested."

"How far does the river go?" she asked, looking up it. She could make out how it wound away northward, but she couldn't see anything beyond that. It was so dark that the river blended against the land, and the only way to tell the land from the sky was that the sky was slightly darker, so the horizon formed a shadow against it.

"I don't know. I never followed it all the way up there." Thomas stepped astride his broom again but didn't lift off. "Do you want to go with me sometime?"

"Of course," Rose said, and she got on her broom and kicked off from the ground. "Do you even have to ask?" She was ready to fly out and follow the river right then, but Thomas joined her in the air and caught hold of her sleeve, spinning her around to face him. "What?"

"I meant sometime in the day, so we could actually see what's down there, and so we don't lose too much sleep before classes."

Rose had to admit that he was right, so she did her best to curb her impatience. "Fine," she said. "I'm willing to wait, but not for very long. How about this coming Saturday?"

Thomas grinned. "Sounds great. I'll meet you in the usual place after breakfast."

"Then it's a date." Rose kissed his cheek quickly and, before he could do anything to respond aside from maybe blushing – as she secretly hoped he was doing – she said, "Race you back, Watson!" and took off toward the castle.

She didn't have to look to know he was right behind her, and she pressed herself as low against her broom as she could, stretching out along it so that she might as well have been a part of it. The wind made her eyes sting and water, and she was sure her nose and ears would be bright red by the time she reached Gryffindor Tower, but she didn't care. This was how life was meant to be lived: lying flat on a broom, racing toward home, with someone right behind her and so close she was sure if she released the broom for a fraction of a second, she would kick him in the face.

Rose won the race, as she'd had no doubt she would, but Thomas was close behind her, and he touched down on the sloping roof of Gryffindor Tower just a bit after she did. "Not bad," he said, "particularly since you don't play Quidditch."

"Not bad?" she asked, and if she hadn't thought there was a chance he might fall, she would have cuffed his arm. "I beat you. I'd say that's pretty good."

Thomas shrugged, smiling mischievously. "Or maybe I let you win. Maybe I'm enough of a gentleman to let a lady think she's really good at flying, when really, she's no better than a first year."

That time Rose really did cuff him, and Thomas laughed. "I'm a Weasley, all right?" she snapped, not caring if she woke up the other third year girls. No one insulted her flying skills, not even Thomas Watson. "My dad was a great Keeper here for two years, my Uncles Fred and George were amazing Beaters, and my Uncle Charlie could've played professionally as a Seeker if he hadn't decided that dragons were better than Quidditch. My Aunt Ginny did play professionally, until she decided to work for _The Daily Prophet_. Got that? Flying's in my blood."

"I didn't meant to insult you that much," Thomas said. "You do have talent, but talent alone isn't enough. You need practice and training for it to be any good, and without those things, even someone who's mediocre at flying but has had proper training could best you."

"Train me, then," Rose said at once. "Teach me how to fly properly."

"All right. But after we follow the river."

"Agreed. Good night, Watson." Before Thomas could tell her good night in return, Rose leapt off of Gryffindor Tower, caught herself on her broom, and flew back into her dormitory.

* * *

><p>Scorpius had something keeping him distracted from the rivalry too, as Rose found out gradually over the course of September. Normally, he and Rose would study whatever happened to catch their attention, regardless of whether it had anything to do with what they were learning in their classes or even what they had learned the day before. They would go over the whole library, except the restricted section, and grab whatever books looked interesting. Sometimes they even stole books from each other, and Rose noticed that this year, most of the books she stole were about history.<p>

She didn't comment on it until she caught him reading _Hogwarts, A History _one day. "What are you doing with that book?" she asked, setting aside her study of geomancy to peer at him. "I thought you'd have read that in your first year." She'd read it even before then, sneaking up to her mother's bookshelf to read it when she was barely strong enough to lift most of her mother's books.

"I did," Scorpius said. He wrote something down on a scrap of parchment and turned to the next page.

"So why are you rereading it?" Rose asked.

"I'm trying to figure something out." He frowned, and Rose decided it was a very cute frown, the sort of frown someone might have when what they read almost matched up with what they had expected but wasn't quite right.

"Is there any way I can help?" she asked. It wasn't just out of the goodness of her heart, though she did want to give him a hand, if she could. If she got to help him, then she would figure out what he was trying to do, and maybe she could even show off a little.

"Not right now," Scorpius said, and Rose's shoulders slumped in irritation. "I'm still trying to build up enough background knowledge to really understand what's going on. Once I know what I need to look at, I'd be glad to have your help." He flipped through a few pages, then turned to the next chapter. "I'm trying to learn more about Slytherin."

"The house or the founder?"

"Both." Scorpius wouldn't say any more, and Rose decided not to pester him, though she badly wanted to. If she were a Hufflepuff, she decided she would have had more reason to, as she could badger him and get away with it.

* * *

><p>Saturday came sooner than Rose expected it to, but she didn't mind at all. As soon as she was done with breakfast, she raced up to her dormitory, grabbed her broom, and leapt out the window. Thomas wasn't there waiting for her, and she flew around the castle a few times before finding him on top of Gryffindor Tower.<p>

"Took your time, Watson?" she asked, hovering beside him.

"I like sleeping in on weekends," he said. "It's hardly my fault you're a morning person."

"I'm not," she said as he got onto his broom and followed her to the lake. They flew at a leisurely pace which felt far more suited to the morning than their late night races would. "I'm an adventure person, and this is an adventure. Let's go!"

She sped up a little, but Thomas had other plans, and Rose wound up having to loop back to meet him. "Why in such a rush, Granger-Weasley?" he asked, and though she could tell from his grin that he was teasing her, she was still annoyed. "Do you think the river's going to have moved from last night?"

"I just want to get on with this and find out what we're going to find out," she said, flying a circle around him.

"The journey matters more than the destination, my young padawan," Thomas said.

Rose paused. "What's a padawan?"

"I'll tell you some other time," Thomas said, and he sped up a little. Rose followed him, and before long they had reached the river.

It looked different in the daylight, less dark and eerie, and rather than landing beside it, they flew above it, following every curve and shift. It was bright blue under the October sky, and when Rose flew down a little closer, she could see the bottom, far off and strange. Rocks covered the riverbed, and though most were ordinary browns and grays, she saw a few that were brightly colored and one that sparkled and glinted in the sunlight.

"Have you ever actually looked down here?" she asked, nearly leaning off her broom to get a better view.

"Not as closely as you are," Thomas said with a laugh. "See anything interesting?"

"Everything's interesting," Rose said, but then something caught her eye more than the other stones had, and she slipped her wand from her sleeve, catching it easily. "_Accio stone!" _she called, and a rock shot up from the depths. She caught it in her spare hand and flew up to meet Thomas. "This one," she said, tucking her wand away and turning the rock over and over. "This one's interesting."

"How so?" Thomas asked, flying over to meet her.

"It's a fossil," Rose said.

"Is it a trilobite?" Thomas's eyes almost lit up, and he blushed a little before saying, "I think trilobites are really interesting. Have since I was a kid."

"I don't know what it is." Rose traced her fingers over the shape. It looked to be some sort of fish, no larger than her hand, but the fossil had imprints of wicked-looking teeth, and she would have thought something so small would have eaten nothing but bugs or plants. It had extra fins, too, and the tail looked too long, at least for the size of the body. "Have you seen anything like this?"

Thomas took the fossil and frowned at it. "No, I don't think I have. Of course, I don't know about every kind of fish. Maybe it was unique to this part of the world back in… back whenever it lived."

Rose took the fossil from his hands and turned back. "I want to find out about this thing. Are you up for our date turning into a library visit?" Flying around and exploring was fun, but the next best way to spend a Saturday was clearly in the library, trying to solve a mystery.

Thomas looked discontented, but he turned back as well. "Maybe I'll leave the research part to you," he said. "I have no doubt you're better at it than I am."

"I have no doubt of that either," Rose said with a grin. "Same time next week? I'd like to see if we can maybe get a little farther next time." She hoped they would be able to go all the way to the source, but then, that would mean she hadn't found something interesting to investigate, and the flight then wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable.

"Is everything I do with you going to be like this?" Thomas asked.

"Stick around and find out," Rose said.


	4. Azkaban

Rose's favorite place on the grounds would have to be the clock tower. She had discovered it the previous winter, and even though it would sometimes be too cold or too hot, it was a good place to work. It was closer to Gryffindor Tower than the library was, so if she needed a quiet place to study, she would carry her books there and read, with only the ticking of the giant second hand to keep her company. No one else ever came up there, but she didn't mind. It was a place she could go to be alone without ever feeling lonely.

The absolute best part had to be the view. From the tower, she could see everything: the forest, the lake, the grounds, the Quidditch pitch… the whole school was stretched out beneath her. If there had been dragons, as Hagrid no doubt wished there were, she could pretend to be a princess in a tower. Actually, she would probably have Ruby pretend to be the princess so she could be a knight. Rose didn't think she could sit around looking pretty all day while someone else had all the fun of saving her. If she had to be a princess, she wanted to be a princess who could use a sword, or at the very least knew her way around a bow and arrow.

Ruby could be a princess, though. She looked the part, and would until she started getting pale from the clouds, and as long as her palace had a library, she would likely be perfectly happy as a princess. Rose could be her knight-errant, running off on quests and returning to receive her payment, but denying everything except a soft, small kiss on the forehead.

Rose shook her head to clear her thoughts, glad no one else was around to see her blush. It had been days since the kiss, and Ruby hadn't given her another, but she still couldn't get it out of her mind. Whenever she saw Ruby, she felt the butterflies again, and no matter how she tried to push them aside, they wouldn't go. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted them to go, either. She rather liked how she felt around Ruby, unfamiliar as it was. The only thing that kept her from doing something about it was the conversation she'd had with James the first night after classes. It wasn't that what James had said had convinced her of anything – falling in love with a vampire was possibly the most foolish thing she could do – but what she had said to him. She was too young for romance, and that was that. This was just a little crush, and in a month or so, she would be over it and she and Ruby could have their old friendship back.

Or perhaps she wouldn't be over it. Maybe it would just stay tucked inside her somewhere, and she would even start pining, or writing bad poetry. That thought made her laugh, and more than anything else, it brought her out of her thoughts and back to her homework. She had been trying to memorize the differences between two very similar kinds of mushrooms, and she couldn't do that if she was busy mooning over her best friend.

"I'm not going to fall in love," she said to no one, looking down at the pages of her textbook and trying to make the words connect in her mind. "I wouldn't have time to beat Scorpius if I did."

Only the steady ticking of the clock answered her.

But maybe it would be good for her to have an interest outside of trying to beat Scorpius. After all, it wouldn't be healthy if it turned into an obsession, especially if he suddenly started getting better than her in classes – not that that would happen. She didn't need to stop trying to be the best, or even change it from her top priority, but it might be nice to have something else to do, something that didn't revolve around him. After all, if her life became nothing but Scorpius, then he would have won in a different way.

Rose groaned and leaned her head back against the wall. This was all so much more complicated than she had thought, and rather exhausting besides.

After a few more minutes of looking at pictures of mushrooms and reading (and rereading) the descriptions below, Rose closed her copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi _and got to her feet. She hadn't given up on getting any work done today, but she did need a bit of a break, something to clear her mind. With a sigh, she got to her feet and began pacing the tower. Maybe she could figure out how the clock worked and whether there was anything special about it or if it was just a giant clock. Her Grandpa Arthur had filled his retirement with a study of Muggle things, and maybe he would be interested in hearing about whether the clock at Hogwarts was anything like Muggle clocks.

For a few minutes, she looked up at the gears, memorizing their positions and tracing the pattern of movement from one to the next. She thought she understood, but she would have to look at other clocks to compare it. Maybe there was a museum somewhere, or she could wait until Christmas and beg her parents to get her a pocket watch. It would have to be an old pocket watch, though, since the clock tower of Hogwarts likely hadn't been changed in decades or even centuries.

She was about to return to her work when movement out of the window caught her eye. When she looked again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then she spotted it: the lake was rippling.

They weren't the sort of ripples that would come from a windy day or from rain, and the day was still aside from the motion of the water. They were the sort of ripples she might see if she were down by the surface, watching someone come up from beneath. To be able to see them this high, though, meant that whatever was coming up had to be very large indeed. For a moment she was frozen with fear, but then curiosity struck, and she ran to the stairs. She might be able to see whatever was surfacing from inside the clock tower, but if possible, she wanted to be down by the lake to get a good look at it.

September had been a gray month, and no one was outside aside from people preparing for the Quidditch season. She wasn't sure when the tryouts would be, but she had already decided not to bother. She was a skilled enough flier, but there were already so many people in Gryffindor interested in being on the team that she had decided to focus on her schoolwork. She didn't need to be both a brilliant student and an excellent Quidditch player. That could be Albus's glory. He'd already told her that he was going to the Slytherin tryouts, and she'd wished him the best. She'd even wished Scorpius well, hoping that maybe all his time in practice would give her an edge.

Rose took the stairs down the castle two at a time, one hand skimming over the railing, ready to catch herself if she missed a step or the staircase happened to move at just the wrong time. She didn't want to tumble down and break a bone, even if Madam Longbottom could fix it in just a few seconds. The time it would take her to get to the Hospital Wing would be less time for her to see whatever was rising out of the lake, and she didn't want to miss a moment.

She was breathless when she burst out of the school, but that didn't stop her from sprinting down to the lake and skidding to a stop just before she splashed into the water. The surface was roiling now, and she was amazed that no one else had come out to look. As she stood on the muddy bank and caught her breath, Rose spotted the first sign of what was rising out of the water. It wasn't the squid, as she'd thought it might be, though now there was far too much motion for it to be the squid, no matter how large it was supposed to be.

It was a mast.

The mast was exactly like one out of the children's books her grandparents would get her for Christmas when she was very little. As soon as she saw it, she was reminded of pirates sailing the seven seas in search of buried treasure, and as the rest of the ship came up, she realized that she was right. The mast did belong to a pirate ship, and one that should have been beautiful if it hadn't been covered in cannon holes and scorch marks.

It might have been a galleon, or a frigate, or one of those other Muggle ships that her Grandpa Arthur liked to make models of to give to various members of the Weasley family. Rose had never bothered to learn the difference, but even she could tell that this ship was made for speed. Once it was up and all the lake water had fallen off of it, it edged around the lake, finally settling several yards from shore but close to the castle. By now, a few other people had ventured out, though they stood further from the lake than Rose did.

A longboat hung off the back of the ship, and peering close, Rose could see men climbing into it and lowering it to the water. They rowed it across the lake, whose waters had begun to settle but still rocked both the ship and the longboat in a way that would have made Rose seasick if she'd ever had the misfortune of being seasick. As it was, it just looked exciting, although there was one moment where she thought that one of the men might topple off the boat and into the water.

The sailors made straight for Rose, and she hurried along the shore to find a place where they might bring their boat out of the water a bit. She stopped by a flatter stretch that had more sand than grass and waved her arms, and the sailors changed their course. A few of the students who had come out were edging closer to the lake, and Rose wondered why none of the professors were there. It was possible they just hadn't noticed what was happening to the lake, but she would have thought that someone would at least glance out their window. Of course, considering how drab the day had looked until then, maybe they were more interested in reading or grading papers, or whatever it was that professors did.

When the sailors dragged the boat ashore, Rose got a better look at them. Most were men, but there were a few women among their number, and they all looked soaked and bedraggled. Their clothes were torn, and several had cuts and bruises on their faces, some of which were wrapped in wet bandages. As they settled the boat onto the land, one of them, a man with long dark hair and a rough beard, approached Rose and asked, "Young lady, could you tell us where we are?"

"This is Hogwarts," she said. "You're in the British Isles."

"The British Isles," he murmured, as though he had never heard the name before and belonged to some exotic new land. "Tell me, how far is that from Essemeulia? We have a vital message for Her Grace, Queen Avina, long may she reign."

"Long may she reign," the other sailors echoed, and all of them looked at Rose expectantly.

For one of the first times, she was speechless.


	5. Study

Thomas had green eyes and yellow wavy hair and skin that looked like it had never once been sunburned. He was lean and tall, and had sharp cheekbones and ears that stuck out a little too far. He laughed easily, and flew well, and had a brilliant smile. He looked wonderful in blue.

Rose wasn't sure, but she thought that she might be in love.

Logically, she knew she was too young to fall in love. She was only thirteen, after all, and she had her studies to focus on, along with all those little things like trying to find the source of the river. What sort of thirteen-year-old already knew who she would fall in love with? Sure, her parents had known each other, but they had only been friends, and squabbling friends at that. For them to have been in love since they were thirteen would have just been weird.

But maybe it didn't have to be true love, or a love that would last until her adulthood. Maybe it could just be for now, the way they were doing it. It could be flying over a river and kissing now and then. It could be looking up as she tumbled from Gryffindor Tower and seeing Thomas try to decide whether he ought to be worried or simply thrilled. It could be two children, with all the brightness of a childhood romance.

Rose liked the sound of that.

Now that she knew what she was going to do with Thomas, she had one less problem to worry about. After all, it wasn't as though he was going to break her heart, and she wasn't going to break his. If anything, they would likely part ways as friends, which had to be the best way for a relationship to end. He was too great for her to lose him easily.

For the first month of the year, she felt as though she had been in limbo. Sure, she had been learning and she had certainly been at Hogwarts, but she hadn't felt as though she had any sort of purpose. Her rivalry with Scorpius felt pale in comparison to the purpose she had found at the start of October, and though she was still determined to beat him, it felt like that was only a small part of what she meant to do at Hogwarts. Far more important was learning as much as she could about the fossil she had found in the lake.

The only trouble was that she had no idea where to start looking. All through lunch the day after finding the stone, Rose picked at her food and thought. She had already looked all through _The Monster Book of Monsters_, and there was nothing inside it about a fish that looked like the fossil. Either the author hadn't thought to cover it or it was an extinct creature. She couldn't tell which would be more useful when she went up to the library or even which books she ought to check out. There had to be a section on magical creatures there, but she didn't know where it was. Maybe she had passed through it but simply never checked out a book.

It was past time for that to change.

As soon as she had finished her lunch – and five minutes later, she barely remembered what she ate, only that she was comfortably full but not so full that her thoughts would be sluggish – she headed up to the library. The stone was tucked into her pocket, where it bulged strangely, as though a bug had bitten her thigh and left an overlarge swelling. In the back of her mind, she noticed people staring at her, but she paid them no mind. She had more to worry about than what her fellow students thought. There was so much for her to do.

The library was pleasantly empty, as it usually was on a Saturday afternoon. Rose liked it that way; it made her feel like a queen over her domain, and as long as she stayed away from Pince, she could even act like a queen, though she never gave orders to her friends. With Scorpius, Ruby, and Albus, she was just Rose, another student trying to learn things. Without them, she could be royalty, and the first years would usually run off and do whatever she asked them to, no matter what house they were in, though Hufflepuffs were usually the nicest and Ravenclaws tended to wander off with the books she'd ordered them to find.

Pince was at the front desk when Rose entered, and that usually meant she would stay there for quite a while, which was fortunate. When Pince was at her desk, the rest of the library belonged to Rose, and she intended to take full advantage of that. She was in a good mood when she entered, and seeing Pince sitting by the desk only cheered her all the more. Rose grinned and waved at the librarian, which she never did, and if she had thought she could get away with it, she would have skipped into the stacks.

Pince watched her pass by with her usual ever-present frown. As soon as she was safely nestled in the shelves, Rose covered her mouth to mask her giggles.

The magical creatures section wasn't that hard to find once Rose tracked down Shiri, a Ravenclaw sixth year who was taking Care of Magical Creatures. "I'd like to get a career in studying magical creatures that are almost like Muggle animals but not quite," Shiri said in a low voice as she led Rose to that section. "Crups are particularly interesting. Are you familiar with them?"

"A little," Rose said, and before Shiri could expound on what particularly interested her about Crups – since she had no doubt the older girl was the sort to do just that – she pulled the fossil out of her pocket, struggling a little from its size. "But first, do you have any idea what this is?"

Her plan to distract Shiri worked, and the older girl took the stone, curious at first, but then eager. "I haven't," she said, voice full of wonder and dark eyes shining. "Where did you find this?"

"It's a secret," Rose said, and she couldn't help grinning at how Shiri's face fell. "When I know more about what it is, I'll tell you."

"Promise?" Shiri almost bounced on her toes, and she bit her lower lip in excitement as Rose took the fossil back and worked it into her pocket again. She'd need to get a purse or something, or just start carrying her book bag everywhere. It would also give her a place to stick her knife, since she hadn't wanted to get rid of it. It was a wonderful knife, regardless of where it had come from.

"I promise," Rose said, and if they hadn't been in a library, Shiri might well have squealed with joy. "Do you know about any books that could help me?"

"Oh, of course!" Shiri said, and she turned on her heel and practically ran through the stacks, glancing up occasionally to look at the books and make sure of where she was. "It doesn't look like anything currently alive – not that I have all the species memorized – so it'll likely be in one of the books about extinct creatures."

"Species?" Rose asked. "Is there a classification for magical creatures, like binominal nomenclature?" When Shiri glanced back to look at her, Rose wondered just what sort of things wizards with no sense of the Muggle world didn't know. They wouldn't know about Dyson spheres, or climate change, or the formation of snowflakes, or black holes, or the city that had sprung up under Beijing. The fact that she had only cursory knowledge of those things barely mattered to her. _Shiri _didn't know them, and that was important. "Like _Homo sapiens_. Specific names for the species."

Shiri's eyes opened wide in understanding. "Oh, sure there are! You learn about them after you take the O.W.L.s for Care of Magical Creatures." She grinned and stepped closer to Rose, lowering her voice. "The thing is, it's a bit of a secret, and they bring in Grubbly-Plank to teach us because there's a specific sort of pronunciation, and Hagrid can't quite get it." Her grin widened. "The species names are the creatures' true names. If you speak them correctly, you can have a certain amount of power over them."

Rose gasped eagerly. "Will you tell me one?"

Shiri shook her head. "You have to be careful who you entrust a secret name to. It's the sort of thing that can go horribly wrong in the hands of someone untrustworthy. I don't think it could lead to another You-Know-Who, but… well, for a strong enough wizard, it could be catastrophic."

"I'm trustworthy," Rose said. "I wouldn't abuse that power."

"You're also thirteen," Shiri said with a little smile. "You're much too young for that sort of thing. I might still be too young, and that's why we can only learn a few names now. Flubberworms are the only ones I've mastered, and the most I can do is tell them to go a certain direction. Half the time they're so dumb they get the direction confused." She shook her head and laughed. "It's pretty funny, or it would be if it weren't so boring."

"You can control them?" Rose asked, and her excitement was joined by a chill. "I guess that could be kind of dangerous." Controlling dragons could easily give a person terrible power, or controlling humans, if that was possible without the Imperius Curse.

"It's not controlling, exactly," Shiri said with a grimace. "It's more like strongly persuading. I tell them what to do, and it depends on how charismatic I can be as to whether they'll listen and do what I want."

Rose frowned. "How charismatic is it possible to be with a flubberworm?"

"Exactly." Shiri turned and started down the hall again. "But I thought we were looking for a book to learn more about your dead fish. Come on. There's bound to be something along here."

There were several somethings, as it turned out, and Rose's arms were soon laden with books. Shiri found _1000 Creatures Dead and Gone_, _Beings Who Lived in What Is Now the North Atlantic_ (which apparently covered river creatures of Europe and eastern North America), and something French that Rose decided to take, figuring she could at least scan the pictures. There were books with nothing but pictures and books with no pictures at all but text so small and dense that Rose had to squint to make out anything from the page and came away five minutes later with a headache. There were books that must have been newly written and books that looked at least a hundred years old.

When Rose held so many that she staggered under their weight, Shiri said, "Well, I think that's a good start?"

"Yeah," Rose said breathlessly. She hadn't done much work with her arms over the summer, and while she was still stronger than she had been at the start of her second year, she was sure she had lost a good bit of the strength she'd gained while rowing the longboat across the lake. "Yeah, I think I'm set."

"Great!" Shiri paused, then asked, "You can see over that, right?"

"Almost." The stack reached Rose's eyes, and she couldn't see the floor, but she could see Shiri and the stacks around her.

"Do you want a hand getting to a table?"

"Yeah. That's be great."

Shiri took Rose's arm and led her through the stacks to the closest table, and there she helped Rose lay out the books, since Rose was sure if she tried to set them down herself they would only topple onto the floor. "I'd offer help with the research, but I've got my own homework to do," Shiri said. "And it is actually homework." She sighed. "Honestly, sometimes being past your O.W.L.s is like being stuck in a glass bubble. I haven't got time for anything anymore."

"Not even Hogsmeade?" Rose would have hated to miss out on that, especially since Honeyduke's was hosting a gingerbread house decorating party for only a few Sickles.

"Not even Hogsmeade," Shiri said with a regretful smile. "But I can't feel too sorry for myself. I've learned more languages in this past month that I ever did as a girl. Besides, I'm a bit old for gingerbread houses, but you be sure to go and have fun." Her smile grew wider, and she waved as she headed off to another stack.

Rose stuck out her tongue at Shiri's back. No one was ever too old for gingerbread houses.

The books were fascinating, and Rose wanted to linger over each one, spending hours looking over a chapter. But she had work to do, so she skimmed over anything that didn't look as though it would have fish in it. The book that was just words was next to useless if she wanted speed, so she decided to save that one for a time when she would actually be able to devote her energy to it. The rest she flipped through, looking at the photographs and the artists' renderings of what the magical creatures were supposed to look like.

It was a wonder that Muggles didn't talk more about these things but stuck to their own ancient creatures, and while dinosaurs and all the rest were interesting enough, there must have been some who noticed bones that didn't belong to any creature they knew about, like the proto-dragons and the thing that looked like a horse but had far too many legs. Surely someone had found evidence of those, unless there was some magic on their remains that kept them from Muggle eyes.

That itself could be a whole field of study, and Rose wondered whether anyone had looked into it. She would have to ask Hagrid about it, or maybe that Grubbly-Plank woman who she'd never met. Uncle Charlie could help her too, she realized, and he might even have seen some of those fossils while out in Romania. She'd have to go out and visit him sometime to see what else was out there for her to learn about. Maybe it could be a summer project, some kind of study on dragons and the native creatures of Romania. She had never considered a career of any sort before – as with love, she was sure she was too young – but now that she thought about it, studying dragons might be interesting. There were worse things she could do, and she might even be able to apprentice to Uncle Charlie.

Her thoughts were distracted by that plan for the future, and she very nearly passed over a picture that almost exactly matched the fish fossil sitting by her books. It did catch her eye, though, and she paused, looking down at the page.

It wasn't exactly the same, but as Rose looked from her fossil to the picture, she saw that there were undeniable similarities. The bodies were very similar shapes, and the tail had the same ratio to the body, so far as she could tell. Rose's fingers shook, and she scanned the page, looking for pertinent information.

_The Mobrahm fish, believed to be native to Northern Britain, lived approximately two to six million years ago. Its habitat was largely in rivers and streams, although there is a saltwater variety which lives in shallow ocean waters (see next page). It is believed to have eaten large insects and small fish, although there are theories that it may have hunted in packs to prey on larger fish and land animals that had the misfortune to fall into the water._

_The magical properties of the Mobrahm are as yet unknown, but the most likely theory as of this writing is that they had the ability to drain the magical energy of other creatures, either killing them or somehow transfiguring them into a non-magical counterpart._

_One theory that has arisen recently is that the Mobrahm is not native to this world but originated in some other. The fact that there is no evidence of a proto-Mobrahm would seem to corroborate this theory, but since it originated from paleontologists working closely with Muggles and Muggle sciences, one cannot disregard the possibility that their methods were corrupted._

Rose snorted, and while she didn't slam the book shut, she was very tempted. Corrupted indeed. The writer of this book probably didn't know a thing about Muggle science except for what had somehow slipped through to his understanding by wizard sources. If it weren't for the fact that she had learned something about the fish – the Mobrahm – she would have tossed aside the book. Instead, she took a few notes before turning to the rest of the books.

None of the others had much on the Mobrahm, so she wrote a letter to Uncle Charlie and sent it off with Hellebore, coaxing the owl with a few extra treats to make the flight out to Romania.

"You're spoiled, you know!" she shouted out the window of the Owlery. Whether Hellebore heard or understood, there was no way of knowing, but she liked to think that her owl was a little chastened. With a smile, she headed out to find Thomas and tell him both what she had learned and that she would be ready to fly again next Saturday.

On the way to Gryffindor Tower, she ran into Scorpius, who was leaving the library with a concerned frown. He didn't notice her, not even when she asked what was wrong, so she decided she would corner him the next day, when they met up in the library with Ruby and Albus. She hoped it wasn't anything too bad; Scorpius looked fragile enough already.


	6. The Founders

There was just so much to learn that Scorpius sometimes didn't know where he would find the time to remember everything. The basics he already knew – Hogwarts had been founded by four people: Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin; Gryffindor had valued bravery, Ravenclaw intelligence, Slytherin blood purity, and Hufflepuff had accepted anyone who wanted to learn; Slytherin had fought with Gryffindor and stormed off; the Sorting Hat was now used to make the decisions the founders would have – but the more he read, the more questions he had, even about the simplest of facts that any first year, even a Muggle-born first year with no prior experience to Hogwarts than a month, could have told him.

Why would the others have allowed Slytherin to join them? Even if preferring blood purity hadn't been as much of an issue back then, the fact that the other founders disagreed with his main stance on accepting students to Hogwarts surely would have kept them from agreeing to let him teach impressionable young people. Every book Scorpius read said that Slytherin and Gryffindor had once been best friends, but that was only a brief mention, and the fight between them was always given much more attention than their friendship.

And what about the other founders? Being human, surely they must have had flaws as well, but Scorpius couldn't track down any evidence of that, not even in _Hogwarts: The Early Days_, whose author often described the founders as though he had known them. Ravenclaw was mentioned as being strict but forgiving, and even her pride was written about in fond terms. Hufflepuff was compassionate and kind, but that was hardly unexpected, and she was the one out of all the four that Scorpius wouldn't mind her idealization. That, however, went to Gryffindor, who was described in the most glowing terms possible, as the ultimate contrast to Slytherin, and Scorpius squirmed a little at reading about him. The fact that he was actually put in opposition to Slytherin by the author, who set the two of them up as practically good and evil, made Scorpius feel almost ill.

He sighed and closed _Hogwarts: The Early Days_. He was only a few chapters into it and already he wanted nothing more to do with the book. He knew he would have to go back, but for now, he decided to focus on something else and grabbed _Lives of the Founders_. Half-afraid the author would have the same bias against Slytherin as the author of _Hogwarts: The Early Days_ did, he flipped to the section on Hufflepuff and decided to do some reading about her.

No matter how much he read, his mind kept drifting back to those questions of before. What did Gryffindor and Slytherin see in each other to begin with? If this was meant to be a school, why wouldn't all of them have agreed with Ravenclaw that they ought to accept students who actually wanted to study, or with Hufflepuff that they would take in anyone and everyone? Why would they trust someone who valued cunning and deviousness, even if those were marks of intelligence?

Why would they trust the hat to speak for Slytherin?

Scorpius froze in the middle of a chapter about Hufflepuff's childhood in Wales, which he hadn't even been properly reading. The thought had come to him suddenly and unexpectedly, but now that he mulled it over, he realized that he might well be on to something and, hands trembling with excitement, grabbed a piece of parchment to start writing down his thoughts.

Why _would _they trust the hat to speak for Slytherin? If everything he had read was true, then the Sorting Hat would have been created when the founders were very old, too old to choose the students for the houses themselves, and Slytherin would have been long gone by then. Why would they even want to have a voice for Slytherin, considering what he had wanted of the school? It was almost as though they wanted their own villains to oppose, a collection of children to remind them of what they shouldn't be.

But he couldn't believe that. Of Gryffindor, possibly, and of Ravenclaw, perhaps, but not of Hufflepuff. She wouldn't ever consent to do such a thing, not unless the book had left something out. Scorpius grabbed it again and anxiously flipped through the pages, looking for any hint of Hufflepuff's cruelty, and he was both relieved and worried when he found none.

He had planned to read through all the books and compile copious notes for his next meeting with Professor Baumhauer, but now he found he had no patience. He had to know about the Sorting Hat as soon as possible.

* * *

><p>Since Scorpius had his revelation on the first Saturday of October, there were still two days before he could reach Professor Baumhauer, and since he had determined to wait until the end of classes to find his office and speak with him, he would have to wait until Monday afternoon. To keep himself from fretting over everything, he worked the rest of Saturday on his homework, but everything was done by Sunday morning, and he spent that afternoon fidgeting and casting random spells, much to the delight of the first years in the common room, who were more than happy to put aside their studies and watch him produce brightly colored bubbles that didn't pop even when jabbed with a sharp, purloined fork.<p>

Albus dropped onto the couch beside him, startling Scorpius enough that one of the bubbles floated away half-formed. "When are you going to tell me what's wrong?" he asked.

It took a moment for Scorpius's heart rate to return to normal. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"My mom taught me how to read people," Albus said. "At least, she taught me the basics. You've been pale all morning, but now your cheeks are bright red, and you gasped when I landed next to you. I don't need to read your dreams or anything to know that you're hiding something and you're trying not to let me know that you're hiding it." He paused and frowned. "Mom didn't teach me that bit. I must've picked it up from Dad talking about his Divination classes."

"You startled me," Scorpius said. "That's all." He did feel his cheeks grow hot and quickly turned his attention back to the bubbles. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. You never know when you'll run into someone who's jumpy."

"Like you?" Albus asked, and when Scorpius didn't grin, Albus's tone became serious again. "I'm not the only one who's been worried about you."

"You don't need to be worried," Scorpius said. "I know I haven't spent much time with you and Ruby lately, but I've been busy." He flicked his wand, and a blue bubble drifted over the head of a dark-haired Slytherin boy, who caught it nimbly in his hands and held it, despite its attempts to wriggle free. "And it was only yesterday that I kept to myself. This week I'll spend more time with everyone, I promise."

"I'm not worried about that," Albus said. "If you start keeping to yourself too much, Ruby might find a way to drag you back to the rest of us, even if she does have to actually drag you. Though dragging's really more Rose's style." Albus grinned, but Scorpius didn't return the expression, and the smile faded from his friend's face.

"Who else is worried about me, then?" Scorpius asked.

"Rose," Albus said, lowering his voice a little. "She saw you walking out of the library yesterday and thought you looked worried, but she was too busy with something else to find out what was wrong, so she asked me to."

Scorpius hadn't even seen Rose the other day, and he felt a bit stung that she had been too busy to talk to him and had instead gone running to her cousin. Of course, it only made sense when he thought about it a bit longer. After all, she and Albus didn't have any sort of rivalry, and she probably wasn't the sort to go out of her way to help her rival with something. "I'm fine," he said. "You can tell her that, if she's interested."

"She is," Albus said. "She cares about you."

The words stung again, and Scorpius flicked his wand, releasing another blue bubble. "Then tell her that I'm fine. I've just got a lot on my mind."

"Is it the Slytherin thing?" Albus's eyes lit up, and he almost bounced on the couch cushion. "How's it going? Have you learned anything yet? Are we really doomed to be evil?" He seemed much more cheerful about the idea than he had been his first year, and far more cheerful than Scorpius was now.

"I don't know," Scorpius admitted. "There have been Slytherins who do wonderful things." He had no doubt that Albus would be one of those. He was a Potter, after all, and though he could try to tell himself that blood and family names meant nothing, there was something about being a Potter that might automatically make someone better, in the same way that being a Malfoy might automatically make them worse. "I do know that a lot of people think that Slytherin was pure evil and Gryffindor was pure good." Hufflepuff was easily better than Gryffindor, and Ravenclaw likely fell somewhere in the middle.

"Well, that's rather obvious, though," Albus said. "You told me that when we got here. Snakes, and all."

"But it's in books!" Scorpius cried, bubbles forgotten, as though this was a betrayal he could hardly imagine. "It's in actual, published books. What am I supposed to think about that?"

Albus shrugged. "It just means you've got a lot more work to do to get people to think we're not evil."

"Right." Scorpius sighed. He didn't want to snap at Albus, tired though he was, and with a flick of his wand, he produced a yellow bubble. "I've been trying to learn things, but I only come up with more questions. I'm going to go to Professor Baumhauer tomorrow to see if there's anything he knows."

"Better him than Binns," Albus said. "Speaking of, I'd better go work on that essay. Did you finish yours yet?"

Scorpius frowned, trying to think of which essay Albus was talking about. "The one about the Second Goblin Wars? Yeah, I did it last week."

"Did you really have to ask which essay?" Albus rolled his eyes, and Scorpius managed to laugh. "You're almost as bad as Rose." He got to his feet and headed for the dormitory but then paused. "You'll be busy tomorrow, I guess, but do you want to meet up in the library Tuesday? Just so you don't have to spend all your time by yourself. You could study your Slytherin thing while we actually study."

"Sure," Scorpius said, and he smiled as Albus headed off. It was nice to be reminded that he had friends.

* * *

><p>The next day, Scorpius was so antsy that he almost turned in his essay for History of Magic in Herbology, and only a whispered reminder from Professor Longbottom that they weren't covering that in class kept him from walking out without that paper. He did leave blushing, but his embarrassment faded quickly as he tried to deflect Rose's questions about what had been bothering him. He wound up promising to tell her in the library on Tuesday, and she must have been satisfied with that, for she didn't ask him about it again the rest of the day.<p>

There wasn't enough time to tell Professor Baumhauer he would be dropping by, so Scorpius was surprised when he knocked on the professor's office door and heard him call out, "Come in, Scorpius."

He pushed open the door and slipped inside. "How did you know it was me?" he asked.

"I didn't think anyone else was likely to drop by," Professor Baumhauer said with a smile. "Please, sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, or hot chocolate? Though it's really a bit early in the year for hot chocolate."

"Tea, thanks," Scorpius said. He sat nervously in a chair and set his bag by his feet, looking around.

"Cream? Sugar?"

Scorpius shook his head, too interested in the room. It was decorated all in green and silver, as he had expected, but somehow that made it feel warm and inviting. The green was like a rich summer day, and the silver made him think of stars rather than something cold.

Professor Baumhauer poured out two cups of tea, added a lump of sugar to one, and passed the other to Scorpius. "I take it this is about your extra credit?" he asked.

Scorpius nodded, taking a sip of his tea. It tasted like peaches and ginger. "Yeah," he said.

"I'm afraid I haven't been able to convince Cuthbert to give you extra credit for any essays," Professor Baumhauer said. "He started rattling on about how it wouldn't be fair to the other students, and I suppose I agree, though it's a shame you're doing all this work for nothing." He blew across the top of his tea before taking a sip. "So, what have you found?"

This was the moment Scorpius had been waiting for. He took another sip, then set his cup and saucer on the table to dig out his notes. As Professor Baumhauer looked through them, he explained what he had read and all the questions that had risen up while reading. As before, Professor Baumhauer said nothing, only nodded and read, but Scorpius pushed on, eager enough that he wasn't at all disheartened. He even went into a few slight speculations, saying that Slytherin House might be the way it was because that was how the other founders had remembered Slytherin when they created the Sorting Hat.

"So you see," he said, as his throat began to go dry, "I need to start learning about the Sorting Hat as soon as possible. I think that's the best way for my research to go." He took another sip of tea and waited, excitement and nerves making his stomach shift.

"I agree," Professor Baumhauer said. "I'm afraid this is the point where I let you down a little, Scorpius." He set down the notes and sighed, as though he had let himself down as well. "I found some time in between teaching and grading to look for information about the Sorting Hat, but I wasn't able to find anything useful. I can really only tell you what you already know: it was Gryffindor's hat, but when he and the other founders got too old to go on teaching and choosing students, he put an enchantment on it that would allow it to make choices on its own. Unfortunately, I can't find any information on what sort of enchantment it might have been."

Scorpius took another sip of his tea. "Is there anything else like this?" he asked. "Anything that might let an inanimate object have a semblance of life?"

To his surprise, Professor Baumhauer shuddered and turned pale, quickly setting his cup down before his hands started shaking. "You're really too young to learn about that," he said. "There is, but it's very powerful dark magic, and I can't imagine any of the founders condoning its use, particularly not Gryffindor."

_Particularly not Hufflepuff_, Scorpius amended silently. For all he knew, Gryffindor might dabble in dark magic, but Hufflepuff never could.

"If I were to tell you, Neville – Professor Longbottom to you – would have my head," Professor Baumhauer said with an anxious laugh. "He's very determined to protect the younger students. After I heard what he went through his seventh year, I completely agree."

"I can't learn anything if you won't tell me," Scorpius said. He wasn't sure he could bear to be kept from knowledge, especially knowledge that could help him and his friends.

Professor Baumhauer sighed. "I suppose I should have known I couldn't keep things from you forever. Please, believe me when I say that this is magic you shouldn't be meddling in. No one should meddle in it, really, and you're much too young to know what it is. Let me keep this secret from you a while longer. Let me believe you're innocent, just for a few more years."

A few more years felt like an eternity, but Scorpius could see that Professor Baumhauer would not be swayed. "All right," he said. "But as soon as you think I'm ready, will you tell me? I have to know."

"I will," Professor Baumhauer said, though Scorpius could tell he hated the thought of doing so. He couldn't shake the feeling that his professor was hoping he would forget all about his plan in those years, and he determined to remember what he wanted to do. He wouldn't be dissuaded from this, no matter how dangerous the knowledge. "In the meantime, I'll look for some more books for you."

"Take your time," Scorpius said quickly. "You're a lot busier than I am, and teaching classes is more important."

"I won't disagree with you," Professor Baumhauer said, and he smiled again. "Why don't you run off and practice some of the spells we'll be working this week? If you do well enough, I might see what I can do about having you demonstrate for the class."

Scorpius left the room at a quick walk and then broke into a run. He wasn't heading off to practice his spells, though. He had a lot of work to do, and he wouldn't give up on his studying just because he needed to wait a few years before he could get a vital piece of information. He had books to read, and letters to write, and many questions to ask.

It was back to the library for him.


	7. One and One

Just knowing the name of the fish, Rose decided on Monday evening, in the middle of her Potions homework, wasn't enough. She wanted to know as much as she possibly could about when it had lived and what other things had lived with it. She wouldn't have a chance to fly out over the river again until Saturday, but that didn't mean she had to sit around and do nothing for the rest of the week. She had a whole library at her disposal, and she intended to use it to as much advantage as she could. After all, it wasn't like she'd had anything else planned for studying; she might as well go ahead and look up extinct creatures.

That Tuesday, when she met up with Albus, Scorpius, and Ruby, she had a stack of books in her arms, including the one where she'd found the Mobrahm. Everyone looked at her in surprise when the books thumped to the table, and as she pulled the top one from the stack, Albus asked, "Have you got some kind of special project going, too?"

"Yeah," she said. "I found a fossil and I'm trying to learn more about it." The book had that musty, old smell that she loved, even though it sometimes made her sneeze, and she opened it to the table of contents and began looking for any hints as to where she might find the Mobrahm. Unfortunately, it was arranged by time period, leaving her no clue as to where to look. With a sigh, she flipped to the index, unleashing a cloud of dust. "Wait, who else has a special project?"

Albus glanced at Scorpius, whose cheeks turned pink. "Go on," Albus said, poking Scorpius with his quill and leaving a small blotch of ink on his sleeve. "Tell them. I bet they'll be interested."

"I'm trying to learn more about why Slytherin House is so often seen as evil," he said. "It looks like it's rooted in how history's been portrayed, so I've decided to try to learn more about the founders, but most of the books draw from a very small amount of information, so almost everything I've found is speculation." He drew a large book to himself and began carefully turning the yellowed, crinkling pages. "There are other things I've found out, though, that make me think I ought to change my focus of study."

When Scorpius didn't elaborate, Ruby asked, "Like what?"

"Well, it's…" He glanced around the library, as though expecting spies to appear at any moment. "It's about the Sorting Hat," he said in an even lower voice, so low that all three of them had to lean closer to hear him. "I think there's something strange about it."

"It's a hat that can talk and think," Ruby said. "I don't know what you guys think, but that still weirds me out. Is it normal for wizards, to have talking clothes and things?"

Everyone else at the table shook their heads. "Sometimes you can get those from the Quidditch World Cup, but they just shout out the names of the players," Albus said. "The enchantment wears off pretty quickly, too."

"That's because they're really cheaply made," Rose said. "This is the Sorting Hat. It was created by the most intelligent witches and wizards around, and it was probably made to last, though I really don't know how a hat could survive for so many centuries. I would have thought it would fall apart by now." She frowned, the Mobrahm temporarily forgotten. "What do you know about the Sorting Hat?" she asked Scorpius.

"Not much," he admitted. "I asked Professor Baumhauer about it, and he said he didn't know much of anything either. When I asked him if there was some similar enchantment that could make objects have life, he just turned pale and said I was too young to know about that sort of thing." Scorpius looked from Rose to Albus. "Do you two know what he was talking about? You're both getting pretty pale."

Rose didn't know about herself, but she could see that all the color had drained from Albus's face, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. "It can't be," she said at once. "They never would have done that."

"But what if –" Albus began, but Rose cut him off at once.

"It can't be," she said, more vehemently than before. "You know this. If it were true, they would never have let the Sorting Hat be used. Someone would have destroyed it by now."

"But they're incredibly hard to destroy," Albus said. "Maybe they decided it was just easier to let it be, since it hasn't done any harm."

"Fiendfyre," Rose said. "The Sword of Gryffindor's been steeped in basilisk venom, they could use that now. And maybe it has caused harm. What if it saw people's ambition and nurtured it, even knowing they would turn to evil? That's plenty harmful. Think of what Voldemort did!"

Rose hadn't thought it possible, but Albus turned even paler. "Maybe they didn't know," he said. "That's a good explanation, right? Maybe the truth was lost, or maybe it was never revealed."

"What are you two talking about?" Ruby asked, looking from one to the other. Scorpius looked just as perplexed. "If this is as important as you two make it seem, you have to tell us. We're a team, remember?" At those words, Scorpius turned pink again. "We help each other out, no matter what we're working on, and right now, Scorpius is working on learning about the Sorting Hat, so that's what we're all trying to do. Got it?"

Rose had never heard Ruby sound so forceful, and Albus looked taken aback. "Do you think we should tell them?" he asked.

"We kind of have to," Rose said. She looked around to make sure no one was listening in before leaning closer to the other three and beginning to whisper. "Albus and I grew up hearing stories about dark magic," she said. "My mom thought we were too young to know about them, but my dad thought they made good stories for kids, and Albus's dad thought we had to understand certain things about the world. They told us how Uncle Harry defeated Voldemort, who had used a powerful dark spell to make these things called Horcruxes."

"What are those?" Ruby asked. "Some kind of weapon?" Her eyes grew wide, and Rose couldn't tell if her friend was excited or merely interested. "Are they something that can destroy the world?"

Rose shook her head. "A Horcrux is a way of keeping yourself alive even after death. I don't really know how it works, but it involves tearing off pieces of your soul and sticking them into inanimate objects. Voldemort ended up making seven."

It was Scorpius's turn to go pale then. "He split his soul into eight pieces? That's… that's…" He faltered, as though unable to come up with any word sufficient to describe his revulsion, and Rose was tempted to reach across the table and give him a brief embrace, but she settled for tapping her toes gently against his shin. He jumped a little but looked relieved and almost managed to return her smile.

"Yeah," Rose said. "It is."

"But the Sorting Hat can't be a Horcrux," Ruby said. "If it's that evil, wouldn't people be able to tell? Can't you just feel when something's bad?"

"I couldn't tell that the pirates were bad," Rose said quietly. She hadn't talked much about them this year, and something pinched inside her stomach now that she did. The pirates had killed Horus, and maybe they had killed Tavian, just because the two of them hadn't wanted her to be taken away.

"Well, bad magic, then," Ruby said. "I would have thought it would leave a feeling of dread in the air, or something." She looked down at her book, which was a heavy tome about witch hunting in the American colonies. Blinking back tears, she closed it and pushed it away. "I guess I read too many Muggle novels when I was younger," she said, trying to force a smile. "They don't know anything about magic."

Rose handed Ruby one of her books. "I've been looking up an extinct magical creature," she said, a bit too loudly, but no one at the table tried to shush her. "It's called the Mobrahm fish, and I found a fossil of it by the lake."

"Really?" Scorpius sounded a bit too excited, and he lunged across the table to grab another of Rose's books. "I never even knew we could study extinct things."

"A lot of it's speculation," Rose said, "but there are some really interesting things in here. Apparently, magical creatures can avoid being seen by Muggles even after they're dead, though I'm not sure anyone's quite figured out how."

"If they still haven't figured it out in four or five years, that can be my job," Ruby said, and she sounded almost as cheerful as normal. "Mobrahm, right? Like this one?" She pointed to an artists' rendering of the fish, and though it took Rose a moment to recognize it, she was able to recollect the shape of the body well enough to nod.

"What have you found about it?" Rose asked.

"Not much yet," Ruby muttered, looking a little abashed. "I only just found the page."

Albus took one of Rose's books then and flipped to the index. "Why were you looking for fossils, anyway?" he asked. "Were you just hanging out by the lake and happened to find one?"

"Actually, Watson showed me a river leading into the lake," she said, and told them most of what had happened between her and Thomas, leaving out the kisses. She wasn't sure why she didn't want them to know, only that she didn't really think it was any of their business who she kissed, and they might as well keep out of it. She did tell them about how she would leap off Gryffindor Tower and catch herself on her broom. Ruby looked proud, Albus looked a bit nervous, and Scorpius looked downright alarmed, which almost made Rose laugh.

"Could we go to see the river too?" Ruby asked, and almost all her nervousness of before was gone, for which Rose was glad. She would have to remember not to bring up Horcruxes again around her, not unless she insisted on helping more with Scorpius's project.

Rose shook her head. "Maybe later. I think Watson and I are going to explore it by ourselves first." Her neck and cheeks grew a little warm, and she turned her attention back to her book, hoping none of them would notice that she was blushing.

"Okay," Ruby said, and though she sounded a bit annoyed, her face was impassive, and her attention was solely on the book before her.

They read for hours, stopping only when Ruby reminded them that it was time for dinner. As Rose gathered up her books, they went around sharing what they had learned, and it felt like they were a proper study group, which made Rose feel a comfortable sort of warmth inside, so unlike what she felt around Thomas, which was bright and excitable.

Rose told them again what she had learned that first day and added that today she had learned more about its bone structure. "They've actually managed to reconstruct a skeleton, and apparently there's something in the bones that isn't in the bones of Muggle animals, but they still don't know what it is. They only know that it reacts with some kinds of magic, but not all kinds. Whoever wrote that chapter was very confused about everything, but I still think I managed to learn quite a bit." She'd also had the idea to write to whoever had that skeleton to see if she could learn more from directly observing it, but the book hadn't said where the skeleton was. That likely meant some time looking through old issues of _The Daily Prophet _to see if it was mentioned anywhere. It would be tiresome, but hopefully rewarding.

Scorpius had found out more about what the world was supposed to have been like back when the Mobrahm had lived. "There weren't any humans yet, but there were almost humans, and apparently there were some magical apes that were almost wizards." He wrinkled his nose. "The book sounded like it was trying to use Muggle science but trying to ignore it at the same time, and I wasn't really sure what was going on, but apparently there have been magical creatures for eons, and no one really knows where the magic comes from. It's like it's part of life itself, but only some kinds of life."

"What if that's what that first book meant?" Rose gasped, nearly dropping her stack in her excitement. "It said that maybe the Mobrahm came out of another world. Maybe that's where magic came from, too, and all magical creatures."

Ruby shook her head. "That would mean magical creatures are different species than non-magical ones. The Mobrahm? Okay, maybe. But witches and wizards are just as human as anyone else. Otherwise there couldn't be half-bloods, or Muggle-borns, or Squibs. Humans and witches would be completely different creatures, unable to interbreed."

Rose had forgotten about that, and she sighed as she carried her books to the shelf. "All right. I guess it was a rubbish theory anyway. It was just something that popped into my head." There might well be something to it, but it would have to be refined a lot before it could mean anything. "My mom's Muggle-born, too. I can't believe I forgot about that. I guess I just started shouting out whatever was on my mind."

"That's okay, Rose," Albus said as he helped her put her books back on the shelves. "I'm used to that by now." Rose stuck her tongue out at him, and he laughed.

"Anyway," Ruby said, drawing everyone's attention back to her, "I found out more about the things that live in the rivers of Northern Britain. I didn't bother memorizing anything, but I did draw some pictures, so when you find more fossils, you can come find me. I bet you can get into Ravenclaw Tower easily enough." She sounded a little bitter again, though Rose couldn't quite figure out why. "It's only a riddle, and you should be able to answer any one of those."

"If I can't, I'll just fly around to a window," Rose said. "Watson left me a broom for when we go out to the river."

"Great," Ruby muttered, and before Rose could say anything else, she had slipped off, brushing roughly past Scorpius, who stumbled a little as she stormed away.

"Is something wrong?" Scorpius asked, and he looked as though he had just looked into the afterlife. "I don't think I've ever seen her that angry. Did you say anything to her?" He looked from Rose to Albus, and they both shrugged in confusion.

"I didn't say anything," Albus said.

"I don't know what I said," Rose said. "I only mentioned having a broom." She looked after Ruby, wondering whether she ought to run off after her to apologize or whether it was already too late. "Do you think she's all right?"

"Probably?" Albus said, but his forehead was wrinkled with worry.

"I hope so." Scorpius bit his lip but didn't go after her. For a moment, the three of them stood in the little hall, looking after Ruby. Rose knew it had been her fault, but she wasn't sure what could have been so wrong. As soon as she saw Ruby again, she would apologize, even if she wasn't sure what kind of apology she would have to give.

"Well, I didn't find much of anything," Albus said after a moment. "I did think of writing to Uncle Charlie, but I guess you already thought of that, huh?"

"I sent out a letter on Saturday," Rose said. "You can write him one too, if you want. I doubt he'd mind getting more letters, especially if they're about something as interesting as this."

Albus shook his head. "I'm actually going to write to Dad about the Horcrux thing. I won't tell him about the Sorting Hat, but I'll tell him that something's come up." He paused and fidgeted with the edge of his sleeve. "But what if he wants to come down to Hogwarts and try to fix everything himself?"

"We won't let him," Rose said, though she wasn't entirely sure how. "We're going to solve this on our own, just like he and his friends did."

"I wasn't worried about that," Albus said. "If something did go wrong, I wouldn't really mind Dad coming out here to save everyone. It's just that I don't want him to worry about us. We don't even know if it is a Horcrux."

"You could ask how to find out whether something is a Horcrux or isn't," Scorpius suggested. He closed his mouth quickly after speaking, as though embarrassed, but Albus smiled at him, and he relaxed a little as they headed out of the library.

"I was already planning to do that," Albus said, "but it's still a good idea. I'll just need to figure out how to word it right."

"I can help," Scorpius said eagerly. "I've gotten pretty good at writing home and not letting my parents know if anything's wrong." His cheeks turned pink again, but he was still smiling, and Albus and Scorpius were deep in discussion as they headed to the Slytherin table.

Rose's stomach growled as she headed to the Gryffindor table, but her thoughts were far away. They were of Ruby and the Mobrahm and Horcruxes, and as she sat down to eat, she barely paid attention to the fact that Thomas was sitting diagonally from her and smiling.


	8. Meeting with Professor Zahradnik

The last time Scorpius had been in Professor Zahradnik's office was almost two years ago, when he had been caught by Argus Filch sneaking into the Restricted Section of the library. Even though he remembered the headmistress as understanding and even helpful, he couldn't avoid feeling nervous as he looked up at the wall that he knew would open and lead to her office. His hands shook, and he swallowed nervously several times before he could speak.

Perhaps it was the gargoyle. It had a horrid grimace and looked as though it would come alive and eat him if he said the wrong thing.

Unfortunately, Scorpius had no idea what the right thing might be.

He cleared his throat. "Ah… hello? I'm Scorpius Malfoy, and you're in my way. Could you please move?"

The gargoyle did nothing, and Scorpius sighed. He hadn't really expected it to do much of anything, but it had been worth a shot to ask nicely. Now he had to figure out what else it might do.

"You've got a password, right?" he asked. "Um…" But no password came to mind. He tried to remember what Mr. Filch had said, but the trip from the library to Professor Zahradnik's office was something of a blur, and he didn't remember much until the tea.

For several minutes, he paced and fretted, sometimes pausing to say whatever word or phrase came to mind. Some were mundane, some were magical, and some came from the Muggle world. Every so often, he would think that perhaps the password was Czech, and he would never be able to guess it then.

Finally, he turned to the gargoyle and said, "Look, could you please just move? I need to see Professor Zahradnik!"

To his surprise, the gargoyle nodded once and leapt aside, revealing an opening in the wall more than wide enough for Scorpius to go through. He stared at it in surprise for a while, then darted through before the gargoyle could change its mind.

"Thanks!" he called, and as he stepped onto the moving staircase, he heard the shifting of stone as the gargoyle returned to its position.

The staircase brought him up to Professor Zahradnik's door, and before Scorpius could second-guess himself, he knocked three times. It was too late to turn and run now, so he stuck his hands behind his back, bit his lip, and waited.

A moment later, he heard her say, "Come in!"

Nervously pushing open the door, he stepped into her office. "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Professor," he said, waiting in the doorway. "Could I talk to you for a few minutes?"

"Of course," she said with a smile. "Have a seat, Scorpius. Can I get you some tea?" She lit a fire in the brazier with a flick of her wand and pulled a tea set out from under her desk, so Scorpius decided it would be rude to refuse. Besides, he remembered liking her tea, and a cup of it might bolster his courage. "I notice you didn't have to be dragged here by Argus this time," she said as the kettle on the brazier boiled. "Did a professor send you?"

"I'm actually not in trouble," Scorpius said, twisting his fingers together in his lap.

Professor Zahradnik's smile widened. "Well, that's a relief. You wouldn't believe how many students come up here because they've gotten into some sort of trouble with their professors. There aren't many who drop by just to have a chat." The water finished boiling quicker than Scorpius had expected – magic, he supposed – and she poured some into each cup and passed one to him. "Are your classes going well?"

"Very," Scorpius said. He noticed the headmistress dipping her teabag up and down and decided to do the same, noticing the water turn from clear to a gentle brown as he did so. "Ancient Runes is a bit harder than I expected, but I like it." He glanced at the cat, which was lounging on a footstool that had been set out of the way. "How are you?"

"Oh, as well as can be expected," she said. "There's paperwork, of course, and correspondence to catch up on, and all sorts of difficult things to deal with. Honestly, the things going on in America – but you didn't come here to discuss politics."

Scorpius shook his head, though he was curious now. "What's going on in America?"

Professor Zahradnik sighed. "It's a mess, let me tell you. Honestly, it makes Eastern Europe look calm by comparison. Ex-patriate Death Eaters have fled over there, and I suspect they're to blame for a good deal of it, but really, the whole country's getting so worked up into a frenzy of blood supremacy that I doubt they'd even need them."

Suddenly Scorpius decided that he didn't want to know. "I came here to ask you a question, actually," he said. "It's about other worlds."

Professor Zahradnik's eyes lit up. "Is this about Avina or the pirates?"

"Neither," Scorpius said. "It's about…" He hesitated, not sure how much to share. "There's a friend of mine who's been doing some research, and apparently the Mobrahm fish may have come from another world. I was wondering what you thought about that theory."

Professor Zahradnik didn't press him for details on his friend or why said friend had been studying the Mobrahm. She merely took a sip of her tea, set aside the bag, and said, "I think it's a complicated theory, to be quite honest. It's entirely possible that beings from other worlds would be unable to survive in this one, or that they would somehow change the environment to make it unsuitable for the live already here. Of course, over the past two years, we've seen that that's not true, since visitors from those worlds did nothing to affect ours."

"Or maybe the effects were very small," Scorpius said. "We might not see them for a long time."

"Perhaps," Professor Zahradnik said with a small smile. "You've been thinking about this a great deal, haven't you? That, or you're quite good at thinking on your feet."

Scorpius's cheeks grew warm, and he shifted a little in his chair. "I guess I have been thinking about it," he said. "But what about the theory? Is it possible that the Mobrahm came from another world? What about other animals? Where did they come from?"

Professor Zahradnik set down her cup and looked at him carefully for a moment. "There are a few possible answers I could give you," she said. "The first is that it doesn't matter where the animals came from. After all, they were able to survive here, and that makes this world as good a home for them as any. The second is that they couldn't possibly have survived in this world, though I think we both know there's proof against that. The third is that it's very possible they came from another world, and that's why there so different from a good many other animals here. That's a rather dangerous theory, though. Do you think you can tell me why?"

Scorpius took a sip of his tea and coughed. He had forgotten how spicy it was, but the taste gave him a moment to think. Why were so many – well, two – of his professors interested in finding out what he thought? Were they trying to get him to teach himself? "Well, I already talked about this with Ro – with my friend. We decided that magic couldn't have come from another world because that would mean magical creatures couldn't interbreed with normal creatures."

"Go on," Professor Zahradnik said, and when Scorpius hesitated, she prompted him, "But clearly, the Mobrahms could interbreed with something, if there were enough to merit mention in a book."

"But couldn't they only breed with themselves anyway?" Scorpius asked, and his eyes widened as he realized what that would mean. "So a lot of them would have had to come through, enough to make a stable population, or at least enough to leave behind a lot of fossils."

"Exactly," Professor Zahradnik said, "but that's not the dangerous part." Scorpius frowned, so she leaned across the table and went on, "Think. If magic comes from another world, even leaving aside the question of wizards and humans being unable to have children together, that means that wizards are different from humans on the most fundamental level. What could that lead to?"

"Witch burnings," Scorpius said, and his stomach shifted at the thought.

"What else?" Professor Zahradnik asked. "Witches and wizards are safe now, but what's going on today that could come from this idea?"

"Blood supremacy," Scorpius said, and this time he felt even worse. "The idea that we're better than they are because we come from somewhere else."

"That's right," Professor Zahradnik said. "You look as though you've had enough worry for one day. Finish your tea, and we'll meet next week. I'm eager to discuss anything you and your friend might have learned."

* * *

><p>Scorpius did return the next week, and the week after that, and soon Professor Zahradnik didn't even bother inviting him back. She simply gave him a knowing smile at the end of each meeting, and he would smile back, sometimes excited, sometimes nervous, but he would always be there at the appointed time.<p>

Another thing Professor Zahradnik didn't need to tell him was the password for the gargoyle, and though Scorpius knew he shouldn't really be, he was proud of himself for figuring it out on his own. The first time he had realized it, it had been from desperation, hoping saying anything would let him in. When he returned, he said it again, hoping it might open, and it did. He grinned all the way up the moving staircase, and the next time he was in the library, he told them about the past two meetings.

"You've been hanging out with Zahradnik?" Ruby asked, sounding awestruck. Not one of them thought it was strange, but then, he supposed the group of people he spent time with would be more impressed than scornful that he had voluntarily gone to the headmistress's office.

"Yeah," Scorpius said. "And guess what the password is? 'I need to see Professor Zahradnik.'"

Albus's eyes grew wide. "Really? It's that helpful? Dad says Professor Dumbledore's was just some random type of candy that would change every year."

"Dumbledore was different," Rose said, as though that could explain everything about the man. "He probably could have done anything with his password, and it wouldn't change the fact that he was a great headmaster." Before the argument could continue, she turned to Scorpius and asked, "So she's okay with me exploring the river?"

"I didn't tell her about that," Scorpius said. "I just told her that I have a friend who's studying fossils and found out about the Mobrahm."

"Good," Rose said. "I found a few more fossils and an interesting rock last time. Maybe she'll know more about them." She handed Scorpius a rock and looked at him carefully, as though afraid he would betray her secret. "I want to be the first to explore this river."

"I don't think Professor Zahradnik would stop you," he said, but Rose just shook her head and went back to her studying.

Professor Zahradnik was incredibly excited when Scorpius brought her the rock, and she explained that it was made up of minerals that weren't natural to this world. A little thrill ran through Scorpius, and he saw that same thrill go through the headmistress as she drew a bright light closer to the rock and showed him various striations and explained that the rock was made up of minerals from several different worlds.

"There must be a natural portal near wherever this was found," she said eagerly. "They're very rare; most portals have to be made by magic. Where did you find this?"

"I didn't," Scorpius said.

"Ah, yes. Your friend." Professor Zahradnik handed the rock back to him. "I won't force you to tell me anything, but I would like you to know that I'm very interested in whatever we could learn from this portal. I'd like to know as much as possible."

"I'll see what I can do," Scorpius said, tucking the rock into his pocket. "Um, Professor?"

"Yes?" She put the light away, and the room again became dim and mysterious. It still felt comfortable and welcoming, but there was something more secluded about it as well, as though the two of them were in a secret little hideout discussing revolutionary ideas. Rose would likely love that.

"What other effects could having a natural portal have?"

"Well, it could bring about a natural arcadia," Professor Zahradnik said. "It could also make it easier for beings from other worlds to reach ours."

"Like Avina!"

"Or the pirates," Professor Zahradnik said, sounding more somber than Scorpius had thought she might be. "It could also call in whatever it was that Avina and the pirates were afraid of. This sort of thing could be both wonderful and dangerous."

Scorpius had been ready to head out, but now he sank back into his chair. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Only be careful," Professor Zahradnik said. "We have to keep an eye out for anything that might be dangerous. Now that we know something could pose a danger to this school, we can't afford to let our guard down."

"Constant vigilance," Scorpius murmured.

"What's that?"

"Oh, just something a friend of mine says sometimes," Scorpius said, his cheeks growing hot. Actually, it was Rose's father who said it, and if Rose was anything like her father, he would say it as a joke, but it still felt apt.

"It's as good a motto as any," Professor Zahradnik said. "Constant vigilance!" She chuckled. "Well, I'll work on it."

* * *

><p>The meetings lasted through autumn and into winter. No matter how cold the rest of the castle could get – and the dungeons and some of the lesser-used passages could get cold enough that Scorpius couldn't pass through one without shivering – Professor Zahradnik's office was warm. She always had two braziers burning, along with a bright fire in her fireplace, and sometimes the cat would hop into Scorpius's lap and try to burrow into his robe.<p>

"Be careful," Professor Zahradnik said the first time, when Scorpius grinned as the cat slipped into the robe and against his shirt. "If she gets against your skin and starts to get too warm, she may claw you on her way out."

Scorpius did leave that day with a few claw marks on his belly and learned to keep his shirt tucked into his pants.

"Do you have any plans for the holidays?" Professor Zahradnik asked on their last meeting before the Christmas holiday started. She sipped her tea calmly, as though they were old friends, and Scorpius realized that, in a way, they were, even if he was just thirteen and she was in charge of the school he attended.

"I'm probably just going to spend it with my mom and dad," he said. "It'll be a pretty quiet holiday. What about you?"

"Oh, the usual," she said with a wry smile. "I'll say I'm going to take a break, but I'll wind up finding more work that needs to be done before the next term starts, and by the time I'm finished, there'll be enough time to take the Floo over to see some old friends in Europe for a few days before coming back. It's not all bad, though," she said, and her smile became genuine. "The first day the students are gone, all the staff go out to the Three Broomsticks and get a little drunk. This place is where I first learned to like butterbeer, though I'll always prefer firewhiskey."

"I hope you enjoy yourself," Scorpius said, and he meant it completely. He didn't want her to wind up being stuck with paperwork while everyone else was celebrating.

"I hope the same for you," Professor Zahradnik said, and she lifted her teacup in a little toast. "But I'm sure you want to spend as much time with your friends as possible before you have to head out. Is there any last minute business you want to take care of?"

"Not really," Scorpius said. The river was partly frozen over, so Rose and Thomas had been spending more time exploring up it than finding fossils, and they hadn't found any reason to believe there was a portal up there, though they still hadn't found the source. Rose was sure they should have found something by now, but she said Thomas thought she just didn't know how to judge distances.

"In that case, I think –"

"Is the Sorting Hat a Horcrux?"

The words slipped out before Scorpius could stop them, and he pressed a hand over his mouth as Professor Zahradnik stared at him. There was something cold and sharp in her gaze that he had never seen before, and it made him want to find some very small place and hide deep inside it. When she did finally speak, her voice was low and deadly.

"I ought to ask how you know about Horcruxes," she said. "I ought to ask why you would think such a thing. I certainly ought to ask why you waited so long to ask me this, unless the idea only came into your head now."

Scorpius shook his head. "I've been wondering since October," he said, his voice muffled by his fingers.

Professor Zahradnik got to her feet. "I would like you to leave now," she said. "I will see you next term. Wait for me to send you word when to arrive."

Scorpius didn't say "good-bye" or even "happy holidays" on his way out. He just leapt to his feet and ran, pelting out of her office and down the moving staircase so fast he nearly fell.


	9. The Burrow

When the river froze over, things got a bit less interesting, at least from a scientific point of view. Rose could no longer fly low over the water and summon fossils to her hand. On reflection, she supposed she could, but she wouldn't be able to tell what they were until they had broken through the ice. It would be pretty much pointless to bring up fossils only to find out that they were useless and drop them on the ice again, and besides, this way she and Thomas had the chance to explore farther.

The Saturday before leaving for the Christmas holidays, they flew out as far as they'd ever gone. It was cold enough that both of them had to bundle up, and even with her body wrapped in thick layers of fabric, Rose couldn't keep from shivering.

"You cold, Granger-Weasley?" Thomas called, his voice muffled a bit by the scarf around his face.

"Aren't you?"

He laughed, or she thought he did, but otherwise gave no answer. Rose pushed her broom on a bit faster, but not too fast. This sort of wind wasn't at all the kind of thing she wanted to feel whipping against her even faster. Racing toward their destination was something that could wait until spring, and that was something both she and Thomas heartily agreed on.

The flight was the same as all the others had been. The ground beneath them was snowy, and the river was a white strand of ice weaving along, at times almost invisible. The ice was completely solid and strong enough to hold both of them, which they had tested before. They flew until Hogwarts was completely out of sight, then turned back, still not having found the source of the river or anything else that might tell them something. There were some trees, but nothing Rose hadn't seen before, and a few plants that she thought she might be able to recognize if they weren't leafless and snow-covered.

They returned to the castle bone-cold and shivering, but as always, they stopped on top of Gryffindor Tower. Rose never knew where Thomas went after their flights, and she didn't particularly care. She was fond of him, and she liked kissing him now and again, but the river was so much more interesting than he was.

"What do you think we'll find?" she asked as they landed on the roof, snow crunching beneath their boots.

"I don't know," Thomas said. "I'd been hoping you could tell me."

"Why? Because I'm the clever one?" Rose rolled her eyes. "You still haven't taught me how to do that spell with the butterflies that smell like spice."

"It isn't because you're the clever one," Thomas said.

"Then why?" Rose asked. "Is it because you can't come up with a thought of your own and have to rely on mine?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Thomas snapped.

It would have been easy enough to take his hands, kiss him on the cheek, and apologize, but Rose was too busy glaring. "I think you should be able to figure that out on your own," she said. "You're a whole year older than I am, and I asked you first."

Thomas turned and stalked away, stumbling a little on the icy slope. Rose wasn't worried; if he slipped, he could use his broom to catch himself. He was a Quidditch player after all, and even if he hadn't learned during his time on the pitch, he had surely seen her do it often enough to get the idea. For a moment Rose thought he would storm all the way around the tower and wind up standing next to her again, but then she decided it was more likely that he would just go to the other side and sulk for a while.

"One of my friends thinks there's a portal to another world at the source," she called to him, shouting to be heard over the wind.

"Oh, yeah?" Thomas didn't turn, and so Rose couldn't be sure she heard him correctly, but she was past the point of caring. "Was it that Malfoy boy?"

"So what if it was?" she yelled.

"I don't like you hanging around him," Thomas yelled back.

"You don't get to decide my friends!" she shouted. "And it's not about Quidditch! Nothing in my life is. I spend time with him because I want to, and no one's going to stop me from doing what I want." Her breath came out in white clouds, and the cold stung her throat, but she kept yelling. "Or are you jealous, Watson?"

"Jealous?" He turned then, and the move didn't look nearly as intimidating as he probably wanted it to be because he stumbled again. "What the hell do I have to be jealous about?"

"I've been kissing you," Rose said. "I thought you were jealous."

"You thought I'd be jealous over that scrawny kid hanging around you?" Thomas shook his head. "And you're just a kid, too. We weren't dating or anything."

Rose set her chin fiercely to keep from crying in anger. "Fine, then," she said. "I guess you can explore the river by yourself. Don't expect to see me out there ever again." She leapt off the tower and soared into her dormitory, pausing only to throw the broom out before shutting and locking the window. She caught sight of Thomas diving past the window, probably to catch the broom before it hit the ground, but then she turned away and sat on her bed.

The dormitory was completely empty, for which Rose was glad. It gave her a chance to have a little privacy, and she curled up on her bed and cried, stopping only to punch her pillow. She was angry at herself, but mostly she was angry at Thomas. Christmas couldn't come soon enough.

* * *

><p>Rose didn't speak to anyone on the ride back to King's Cross. Her friends could tell she was angry and decided against trying to figure out what was wrong. Scorpius was rather out of sorts as well and spent the whole trip staring out the window and biting his lower lip. He looked paler than normal, and there were shadows under his eyes, as though he hadn't been sleeping well. Rose sat in the opposite corner, scowling at nothing, which left Albus and Ruby as the only two cheerful people in the compartment. They tried talking for a while, but all their conversations fell flat, and eventually they just decided to read.<p>

As soon as the train reached King's Cross, Rose grabbed her suitcase and stormed out. She just wanted to get to the Burrow so she could be distracted, and the last thing she needed was for someone to clap a hand over her eyes and say, "Guess who?"

"Shove off, James," she said, wriggling free of his grasp. "Go bother Albus. He's the one you haven't seen all year."

"I've barely seen you, either," James said, falling into step beside her. "And it's not just because you've been spending all your time in the library. I've gone there, and you weren't around. And yes, I do go to the library on occasion." His almost-offended tone made Rose giggle a little, and James nudged her gently, catching her arm before she could slip on the ice of the station. "So, who've you been spending all your time with?"

"Thomas Watson." Rose couldn't tell whether the heat rising up her cheeks came from anger or embarrassment, though she supposed it could easily be both. At least she hadn't seen him on the train.

"Watson? Really?" James was grinning widely now. "Rosie's got a boyfriend!"

"Not anymore!" Rose snapped, and James's grin faded at once.

"Did he break up with you?" he asked. When Rose didn't answer, James draped an arm over her shoulders and leaned in closer. "If he hurt you, just say the word and I'll hurt him right back. I'll hex him so bad he won't have toenails until this time next year."

Rose shook her head. "I broke up with him," she said, "and we weren't even dating, really. At least, he said we weren't."

"Do you want me to hex him anyway?" James asked, sounding almost eager. "No one makes my favorite cousin cry and gets away with it."

"I'm fine," Rose insisted, pulling away from him. "And don't hex Watson. He's two years younger than you, and it wouldn't be fair." She didn't point out that she was perfectly capable of doing her own hexing. If she'd been going to do anything to Watson, she would have done it by now, but getting revenge over something that wasn't even a breakup was just childish. She might be young, but the knife she still sometimes wore strapped under her shirt reminded her that she wasn't a child.

"I don't care how young he is," James said. "If someone hurts you, they pay for it. That's how the world works." He tugged on one of her braids, and Rose punched his side. "Anyway, I have a little brother to torment. See you at the Burrow!"

* * *

><p>As it had been the previous year and the year before that, the Burrow was crowded with people by the time Rose arrived. There were hugs all around, as usual, but this year Uncle Charlie grabbed her shoulder and pulled her over to the fire, where there were two mugs of hot chocolate waiting.<p>

"Sorry I haven't written you back," he said when they were both settled there and warm. "I've been getting your letters, but it's been pretty busy in Romania, and I didn't want to leave my colleagues with extra work, even though they say they'll be fine with it." He took a sip of his hot chocolate, and in the flickering firelight, Rose saw that he looked older than she remembered. His short hair was streaked with gray, dulling the red a little, and there were more scars and lines on his face than there had been the year before. In the field, he might look badass, but in Grandma Molly's living room, he just looked tired.

"It's okay," she said, and took a gulp from her mug. "What did you think?"

"I looked forward to every one," Uncle Charlie said, and his grin suddenly made him look even younger than Aunt Ginny. "I never found a fossil in my time at Hogwarts, but then, I never looked. What made you think to go up to that river, anyway?"

Rose gave him the short version, leaving out the parts where she kissed Thomas, although from the way she clenched the mug tighter whenever she mentioned him, she suspected Uncle Charlie would be able to guess how she had felt about him. She told him about flying over the river and about finding the Mobrahm fossil, and about how she had been annoyed at the book for speaking so poorly about Muggle sciences. Her chocolate was still hot when she finished – an enchanted mug, most likely – and she took another large gulp, leaving whipped cream on the tip of her nose, which she wiped off onto her sleeve.

"When did you find the river?" she asked, when Uncle Charlie said nothing.

"My fifth year, I think," he said, leaning against the brick of the fireplace and looking out at the rest of the room. "Percy was just a second year, if I recall, and so far beneath my notice, and Bill was too busy studying to pay attention to me, so I decided to wander around. I spent time with Hagrid, and wandered into the Forbidden Forest once or twice – remind me to tell you about how I got my first scar – and one day, in the middle of January, I found the river."

Rose wanted to interrupt him right there and ask at once for the story of his first scar, but she knew she would have to be patient. It was more important that she hear about the river than about his scar.

"I guess I shouldn't have gone out skating on the lake, since it probably hadn't completely frozen over. Winters weren't nearly as cold as they are now, and I've heard that the lake now gets thick enough that people can walk on it safely. I didn't pay much attention to the danger though, and I figured that if I fell through, I might at least get to see the giant squid. Luckily, I made it all the way around the lake, and I noticed that there was a river that no one had mentioned. Whenever I asked people about it, they claimed never to have heard of it and said I was making things up." He grinned. "I don't know whether you'd believe this, but I had a bit of a reputation back when I was at Hogwarts. I was nearly as bad as some of my younger brothers, but I understand why no one believed me."

"What did you do after that?" Rose asked. Her hot chocolate was almost gone, but she was too comfortable to get up and refill her mug.

"I kept to my studying," Uncle Charlie said with a laugh. "O.W.L.s were coming up, and I wanted to do as well as Bill had, but in Care of Magical Creatures instead of Ancient Runes. The next year, I'd nearly forgotten about the river. I'd completely forgotten until you told me just now. You'll have to keep exploring it so I know what's at the other end."

"That might be kind of hard," Rose said, hunching her shoulders. "Thomas and I got into a fight, and I threw away the broom." It had been a stupid thing to do, but it was too late to go back and change it.

"I guess you'll need your own broom, then," Uncle Charlie said. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and Rose muffled a shriek of excitement against the sleeve of last year's Weasley sweater. Fortunately, the other cousins were being loud enough that no one noticed.

"Thank you!" she said, setting down her mug and launching herself at him in a hug that almost knocked him away from the fireplace. He laughed and hugged her back.

"It was partly Bill's idea," Uncle Charlie said. "You'll have to thank him, too. But not until Christmas."

"Right." She sat down again, remembering that not everyone would hint at her about what presents she would get, and she was certain that Uncle Charlie hadn't given anyone else hints about their presents. "But really, thanks."

"Just try to act surprised," Uncle Charlie said with a wink.

* * *

><p>Christmas was as wonderful as Rose had expected. The first present she opened was from Uncle Bill and Uncle Charlie, and it was indeed a broom. It wasn't one of the Firebolt line, or a Nimbus, but it was almost as good: a Stratus 2020. Rose cried out with joy and hugged both her uncles at once. When she drew back a little, she saw that Uncle Bill was also looking a bit gray and weary.<p>

There were new Weasley sweaters for everyone, of course, and Rose's was bright blue, to go with her eyes. It was still a bit too large for her, and though Grandma Molly said she would grow into it, Rose was secretly suspicious that she wouldn't be able to grow into it. It was warm and cozy despite the size, and Rose wore it for the rest of the day as everyone else opened their presents and the adults drank firewhiskey and cordials.

The best gift she received was by far the Stratus, but there were plenty of other good things. There were sweets, of course, and cookies, and pies of all sorts, and Uncle Bill had brought over enough butterbeer for the kids. She got warm socks from Uncle Percy, and also warm gloves and a new hat, and everything was comfortable enough that she smiled and didn't show just how boring she thought they were. She got some random things from Uncle George's shop and some flying gloves and goggles from Aunt Ginny, who must have been in on the plan to get her a broom. Her parents got her a book with some of the latest theories in Arithmancy, and Grandpa Arthur got her a rubber duck.

From Uncle Harry, she got a stern talking-to.

The day after Christmas, while everyone else was clearing up from the celebrations and James was out throwing gnomes at Lily and Hugo, Uncle Harry pulled her and Albus outside and led them on a long walk, far enough that they were hidden from the Burrow. Rose was wrapped up in her sweater and the gifts from Percy, and Albus was similarly attired, but he was pale and she couldn't shake a chill that made her teeth chatter and her eyes feel like they were about to start crying as soon as Uncle Harry spoke.

"I know the two of you have been spending a lot of time together at school," he said, and Rose took a deep breath to keep her calm. "That's why I wanted to have you both out here. I'm sure that if Albus is involved in something, Rose would almost have to be as well." He stood both of them before him and set a hand on their shoulders. "I'm not going to ask any questions. I just want to tell you that, no matter what stories Ron may have told you, Horcruxes are not something for children to deal with. Whatever led you to ask about them, I want you to drop it. Is that understood?"

They both nodded, and Uncle Harry let them walk around for a while. Rose tried to act like a carefree girl, but her mind was whirling. She wouldn't give up, for Scorpius's sake.


	10. Horcruxes

Christmas at Malfoy Manor was sedate, and Scorpius's gifts were, for the most part, utilitarian. He got books, as usual, and some socks, and a new hat. He was grateful for all of them, but sometimes he wondered what sort of family he must have to get such useful things – and to always be sure of knowing what he would get – while so many other people chattered about exciting, frivolous presents.

There was delicious food, of course, courtesy of the house-elves, and Scorpius tried to clear his plate at every meal, but he didn't have much of an appetite. He wasn't sleeping well either, and it was impossible to miss the worried glances he got from his parents. Whenever he caught sight of his reflection, he understood why they were so anxious for him. He looked like a wreck. He had gotten taller but was just as thin as he had been when he was eleven. Only having tailored clothes kept them from falling off his body. The bones in his face stood out, as did his collarbone and the bones in his wrist.

It was only because he was starting to grow so quickly, he told himself. Once his height slowed down, he wouldn't look nearly as scrawny.

But no longer growing wouldn't get rid of the shadows under his eyes, and it wouldn't put even a hint of color in his cheeks. No matter what he told himself or his parents, he knew he wouldn't look any better until he could stop lying awake at night, thinking about what Professor Zahradnik had told him.

He was amazed that she hadn't written a letter to his parents to let him know that he was studying Horcruxes. If they were was dark as Rose and Albus had said they were, and dark enough that Professor Baumhauer wouldn't even speak of them, and dark enough that the mere mention of one would stir up such emotion in the headmistress, surely she would think it worthy of mentioning to his parents. But no owl arrived, and neither of his parents mentioned it over dinner or any other time. Maybe Professor Zahradnik just wanted to wait until he had returned to speak to him, and then she would send an owl to his parents. They would think that he was planning to be a dark wizard.

He already had the name for it. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy. A scorpion, a sun god, and bad faith.

When he lay awake at night, he wondered how people would look at him if they knew he was looking into Horcruxes. Would they see his father, the budding Death Eater? Would they see him as a new Voldemort? Or would they just see a confused thirteen-year-old boy who was in over his head and didn't know how to get out?

The days dragged on until the end of break.

* * *

><p>The end of break came all too quickly. Before Scorpius knew it was coming, he had to pack up everything and head to King's Cross with his family. No one spoke on the ride to the station, and he got only a quick hug from each of his parents before gathering his bags and heading on to the train.<p>

He wanted to sit alone, if possible, and after a few minutes, he managed to find an empty compartment and settle into it. It wasn't empty for long, though; shortly after the train started, the door opened, and Rose pelted in, tossing aside a suitcase and a broom onto the empty seats. Before he could tell her that he would rather be left alone, she had flung her arms around him, pressing him against the back of the seat and partly against the window.

"I'm with you," she said as he tentatively wrapped his arms around her as well. "I'm with you all the way."

"Thanks?" There was nowhere for him to wriggle away, and he tried to spit a stray strand of her hair out of his mouth. "For what?"

"The Horcruxes, of course," she said, pulling back and grinning at him as though he were an idiot. "I don't care that Uncle Harry told me and Albus to stop looking into them. You're my friend, and I'm going to stick by your side no matter what. Whatever you need me to study, I'll do it. We're going to figure this out together."

Over the little speech, her grin had faded, and now she looked earnest, so much so that it was almost unnerving on her young face. Scorpius shifted a little, and Rose scooted back to give him room. "You mean it?" he asked, though he didn't see any evidence that she had been lying.

"Of course," she said. "I want to figure this out just as much as you do, even if I have different reasons."

"I meant about you being my friend."

The grin came back in an instant. "Yeah. I meant that too. Ruby's still going to be my best friend, but you're pretty cool too." She nudged his shoulder with hers, and he managed a small smile in response.

"I think I can live with that." He looked out the window and saw that a snowy landscape was racing by. It wasn't terribly interesting, since he had already seen it several times, and in spite of himself, he didn't really want to be alone anymore. He would much rather be around Rose, so he got up and closed the compartment door. On the way, he got a glimpse of her broom and smiled again. "You've got a Stratus?"

"Stratus 2020," Rose said proudly. "My Uncle Charlie got it for me for Christmas so I can explore the river. Here, let me show you what my Aunt Ginny got to go with it!" She sprang to her feet, opened her suitcase, and pulled out a pair of flying gloves and some goggles. "What do you think?"

"They look great," Scorpius said, looking at them a little before handing them back. As Rose put them away, he asked, "Weren't you going flying with Watson, though?"

"We broke up," Rose said, and though she sounded a little bitter, she was smiling when she returned to her seat. "This just means I get to explore the river on my own and figure things out by myself. I'll look for everything you said Zahradnik mentioned about portals, and I'll make sure to write everything down so you can tell her."

Scorpius bit his lip. He had mentioned his meetings with Professor Zahradnik to the others, but he hadn't had the chance to tell them about what she had said the last time he saw her. He had been too nervous and hadn't slept well the night before, and besides, Rose had been glaring at everyone in her path. He hadn't wanted to say anything that might make her snap at him, and now that they were friends, he was glad he had held his tongue. It was better to be friends than to have her hate him, even if it meant giving up their rivalry.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked. She got up again, this time to stick her things on the rack over the seats. "Don't tell me everything's fine, because I can tell something's bothering you. Is it the same thing as before break?"

Scorpius nodded, and when Rose fixed him with a piercing stare – or what felt like a piercing stare, though it was probably gentle for her – he told her about how his last meeting with Professor Zahradnik had gone. She watched him while he spoke, and when he finished, she sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. They sat in silence for a while, and then she pulled him a bit closer. It was strange, but not unpleasant, and after a moment he rested his head against hers.

"Are you going to be all right?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I've just been kind of nervous about going back. I don't want to get in trouble over this." He bit his lip again and was glad Rose couldn't see it. He had almost told her about how nervous he was that people would think he wanted to be a dark wizard. They wouldn't think that about her, of course, and he doubted anyone could think Ruby would want to be dark – she had almost started crying when she learned about Horcruxes, and they had been careful not to mention them around her again – and Albus was a Potter. There was no chance a Potter could be evil.

But a Malfoy… there was precedent for that. People would say it wasn't a surprise, given what his father had done, and he would only let everyone down.

"You okay?" Rose asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"You're shaking a little." She wrapped her arm tighter around him, and he tried not to tremble as much, though he wasn't sure how successful he was. He hadn't even noticed he was shaking to begin with.

"I'm fine," he said. Hoping to change the subject from himself, he asked, "Is Albus going to be here?"

"He said he might," Rose said. "I saw you and wanted to run ahead to talk to you, since I forgot to send you a Christmas card, and he said that he would look for Ruby and meet up with us. Maybe they're just having trouble finding our compartment."

Scorpius nodded. He did want to see Albus and Ruby, but at the same time, if they came in, Rose would probably let go of him and move to the other side. He wasn't entirely sure why he liked sitting so close to her, but he knew that he did like it, and he wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could.

* * *

><p>Life returned to normal fairly quickly for everyone. Albus and Rose chattered about salamanders and how their entire Care of Magical Creatures class had crowded into Professor Hagrid's hut both to learn about the creatures and to stay warm. There weren't all that many animals that they could learn about when it was so cold, after all, and Albus suspected they might just spend the whole winter on salamanders.<p>

"I wouldn't complain if we do," he said, shivering again. "Do you know how cold it is out there?"

"He has to walk out to the greenhouses with you every time you have Herbology," Rose said, making a face at Albus before smiling at Scorpius. "He knows exactly how cold it is."

"Yeah, but he doesn't have to stand out there, like we might." Albus shivered once more, for effect, and then turned back to his work. He had found a book about salamanders and was apparently intent on learning as much as he could before having to constantly study them.

Scorpius had told them about what Professor Zahradnik had said, knowing that if he didn't, Rose would, and all of them had promised to support him. Ruby and Albus had both looked nervous, but they had sounded determined, and Scorpius hadn't been able to keep from smiling at the thought that he had people who would stand by his side, no matter what. Albus told him that his father had wanted him to keep from studying Horcruxes, but he would be all right with lying, though his voice shook a little when he said that.

"It's all right if you don't want to," Scorpius told Ruby. "I know you didn't like the thought of Horcruxes."

"I did some thinking over the break," Ruby said, glancing nervously around the table. "I don't like that Horcruxes exist, and I think the best thing to do is to act. I can't just sit around and do nothing."

"Sure you can," Rose said. "We all could. We're thirteen, and if I agreed with Uncle Harry, that means we're too young." She turned another page in her book, and Scorpius caught sight of a picture of an animal that he very much hoped was extinct. "But I don't agree with him, obviously."

"I wasn't finished," Ruby said, and for the first time Scorpius could remember, Rose blushed and looked away.

"Sorry," she muttered, and Ruby rubbed her shoulder, which for some reason only made Rose blush even more, though she smiled as well.

"I can't just sit around and do nothing," Ruby said again. "I know I'm young, but it doesn't matter. I have to act, especially when I've found something that I think is wrong. Having a Horcrux around would be wrong, and I have to do something about it." She sounded fierce now, almost angry, and her gaze around the table dared all of them to say something to disagree with her. "It doesn't matter how scared I am. I have to do something."

"Then we'll all do something," Scorpius said, sounding braver than he felt. "We're all in this together."

Everyone smiled, and they were just about to get down to work when Ernest Rooiakker, a first year Hufflepuff, came up to the table. "Is one of you Scorpius Malfoy?"

"I am," Scorpius said.

Ernest looked at him and said, "I was told to tell you that Professor Zahradnik wants to see you in her office as soon as possible." He swallowed nervously and looked around at the rest of the table. "She wasn't the one that told me, though. I don't think it's a trick. Professor Baumhauer looked really serious about it."

Scorpius's heart dropped, but he took a deep breath and gathered up his things. "I'll see you guys later," he said, and hurried out of the library.

Ernest scurried off to the Hufflepuff Common Room, leaving Scorpius to walk alone to Professor Zahradnik's office. With every step, he felt more nervous, but he forced himself to keep moving. It was like Ruby said; it didn't matter how frightened he was. He had to act.

The gargoyle looked even more menacing than normal, and his voice trembled as he said, "I need to see Professor Zahradnik." The gargoyle leapt aside, and Scorpius glanced up at its face as he walked past. It had the same expression as ever, but he couldn't help feeling sure that it was grinning at him. He hurried along and went up the moving staircase, walking up it two steps at a time so he could get there even faster. His legs were likely longer than he remembered, for it was easier than he had expected to climb them.

When he reached Professor Zahradnik's door, he hesitated, one hand raised to knock. It was easy to tell himself that he had to do this, and even easy to run up the stairs, but now that he actually had to enter, he found that he didn't want to. He wanted to hide, because he was only thirteen years old and much too young to be worried about dark magic or the Sorting Hat.

"If you're out there, Scorpius, feel free to come in. The door's never locked."

That left him no choice, so he pushed open the door and stepped into the office. It looked the same as it always did, and Professor Zahradnik and her cat looked just as they always had, and for a moment, Scorpius relaxed, but only a little. "How did you know I was out there?" he asked.

"I asked Professor Baumhauer to send a message with his best first year student that I needed you," she said with a little smile. "I've been calling that out every fifteen minutes. Come, sit down. I'll make some tea."

Scorpius approached the chair cautiously and sat down as Professor Zahradnik prepared her tea set. "His best first year student is a Hufflepuff?" He tried to sound merely curious, but the truth was that he was rather surprised. A Ravenclaw would have been what he expected, or a Slytherin from ambition, though he supposed a Hufflepuff would work hard to get good marks.

"I was surprised too," Professor Zahradnik said. "That's part of the reason I wanted to speak to you. I've been looking into some records lately, and a few things have surprised me." She pulled a piece of parchment from a stack and looked over it. "The top students from each class haven't been Ravenclaws for a long time. There are a good many Slytherins whose ambitions aren't as sharp as they have been in years past. Gryffindors aren't always spurred to the same acts of overt bravery as they have been. There is only one conclusion I can draw: something is wrong with the Sorting Hat."

Scorpius gasped, but before he could say anything, Professor Zahradnik held up a finger, and he closed his mouth.

"I'm not suggesting that it's a Horcrux, and I'm not willing to get rid of it," she said. "I am saying that I am willing to entertain the suggestion, as long as you promise to be careful. I don't want you to meddle in things that are beyond you. It's for your own protection. Do you understand?"

Scorpius nodded. "Will you still let me help, though?"

Professor Zahradnik sighed. "I doubt you'll let me get away with not allowing that. You may not be a Gryffindor, but there is bravery in you. You may help, but only a little, and I would prefer that you wait a while, until you're older. Is this acceptable?"

"I guess so," Scorpius said with a shrug. Professor Zahradnik didn't seem like the type of woman who could be argued with.

"Excellent." She poured him a cup of tea and passed it across the table. "Let's set up a schedule, then. I'll do some research this year while you study the portal by the river, if there is one. Next year, we'll meet, and you can learn more about Horcruxes. Fourteen is still young, but I'll at least have time to prepare." She raised her cup.


	11. Flight

The Stratus was wonderful. Rose had never owned her own broom before, aside from a toy one when she was little that had gone to Hugo when he was two and she was too large for it. By that time, she had learned that she preferred reading to flying, and no one had bothered to give her a broom again.

But this broom was perfect, and as she launched off of Gryffindor Tower on the first Saturday back, she knew that she would never give this up. It didn't matter whether flying was in her blood; the important thing was that it was in her spirit. She had felt a sense of that while flying with Thomas, but now that she had her very own broom and no one to share the sky with, it felt even more right. She let herself fall, counting out three seconds before she swung the Stratus under her legs and rose into the sky.

It was like nothing she had ever felt before. It wasn't one of the Firebolt line, which were said to be practically an extension of the flyer's body, or a Nimbus, which had inspired the Stratus line, but it was still incredible. The broom felt lighter than air, and she rose easily, spiraling on a current of wind. She could already tell what sort of flying it would give her: the sort where she had to coax and whisper to it, the kind where she had to find ways to work around the wind instead of forcing the air to follow her commands, as she would on a Nimbus.

The air brought her up above the castle, and she realized that she would have to try this on a windy day. It would be dangerous, but that was part of the fun. A windy spring day would be perfect for her to practice dipping and weaving through the air. This winter would allow her to practice flying in general and let her get used to her new broom.

It took her a few hours before she was ready to fly over the river, and by that time, she was pretty much used to the basics of flying. It might help to have someone actually teach her. Maybe Scorpius would be willing to help her out. That would be a perfect way to get back at Thomas, too.

The Stratus must have been at least a little attuned to her emotions, for as anger spiked in her, the broom sped up, racing above the frozen lake. She was low enough that the toes of her boots scraped against the ice, sending her in little wiggles and shivers across the lake. The danger of running off course or falling was enough to make her laugh, and with that, she rose up off the lake, shooting into the air high enough to see the castle like a little toy. The air wasn't so thin that she had trouble breathing, but she could feel the cold even more up there than down by the lake, biting through all her winter clothes.

She suspected she looked strange on her broom, or would if anyone could see her. She was dressed in her thickest boots and wore two pairs of leggings to keep her legs warm. Her bright blue sweater was large and bulky, and over her flying gloves she wore the gloves Uncle Percy had got her. Her scarf was wrapped around her face, covering almost everything that the hat didn't cover, and her goggles went over her eyes. There must have been some kind of charm on them to keep them from steaming over. If it weren't for the drab colors of the clothes Uncle Percy had given her, she suspected she would look like a bright speck of color against the gray sky.

She soared over the lake to the river and spotted it easy, even with the snow all around it. The goggles were tinted to keep the glare down, and she didn't have to squint at all. Everything was clear and bright, and she swooped down to the surface of the river to let her toes skim against the ice. She could repair them easily enough, so she didn't care if they got scuffed. Magic was absolutely wonderful.

She didn't find a portal that day, but she also didn't see Thomas Watson, so the day wasn't all bad.

* * *

><p>Winter seemed to last forever, but every Saturday, Rose still went out to the frozen river and flew above it, looking for some clue as to where a portal might be. Some days she flew fast enough that she almost thought the Stratus would start to fly backward because of the force of wind rushing against her body. Once or twice the broom stuttered and almost started to shoot backward, but Rose tightened her grip on the handle and forced it on. It wasn't a fight between her and the broom; it was simply the two of them coming to an agreement, and that agreement was that she was right.<p>

She loved her Stratus, even if it did seem to have its own way of thinking. It always followed her touch and commands, but there were moments when she was sure it had a different idea of where she ought to go. She'd never known anyone with a Stratus – most students went for the brooms that came from larger companies and had more well-known names – and for all she knew, the brooms would act like this all the time. If so, then perhaps she had a new favorite company.

In February, on a day when freezing rain was pouring out of the sky hard enough that Rose didn't want to even venture outdoors, she settled next to the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room with a piece of parchment and a quill.

_Dear Uncle Charlie,_

_Sorry I haven't written for a while, but things have been kind of busy, and I didn't want to send Hellebore out in the cold. It's bad enough that she has to fly all the way to Romania to deliver a letter to you without having to send her in weather like this. It's sleeting right now, and it's snowed almost every night. Some of the days have been below freezing, and Hagrid's been keeping everyone inside his hut. At least, he does that with my year. I don't know about the older students._

_I haven't found very much this month; I don't want to go fossil hunting through the ice, and I haven't found anything terribly interesting about the source of the river. It must be farther than I thought, because I can't seem to reach it. Whenever I think I must be getting close, the river just goes on and on, like it won't ever stop. Sometimes I feel like I must have reached the sea already, but apparently I haven't._

_You might not get many letters from me until spring, and this one's mostly just to say thank you for the broom. Have you ever flown on a Stratus? It's like I have to fight a little for every movement, but it also works with me. It's really cool, though, and I can't tell if I'm the only person who deals with this or if every one of their brooms does it. I think I'm the only person with a Stratus in this whole school._

_I hope things are going well for you in Romania!_

_Love,_

_Rose_

She didn't send Hellebore out for another week, until things had grown warmer, if only by a little. It wasn't warm enough for her to shed any of her winter clothes, and Hellebore gave her a scornful look as she flew out, but Rose promised to give her extra treats and something warm to drink. Whether or not her owl could understand her, she flew out and returned some days later. There was no response from Uncle Charlie, of course, but she hadn't been expecting one. She would hear from him in summer, when he came by the Burrow to visit.

She spent plenty of time with Scorpius, too. Even though he looked better than he had on the train ride back, he still looked like he could use some company, so she led him around the castle, finding secret passages. In early March, she had heard from James about a passage that would lead to something interesting, though he hadn't told her what. The only problem was that it was set in a little room that could only fit one of them, so Rose decided to let Scorpius be the one to go in. She could always follow him afterward. "The door on the left," Rose called from outside.

Scorpius said nothing, and she sighed. He probably wasn't sulking, since he didn't seem the type to do that, but she suspected something was wrong, and she couldn't help worrying a little.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yeah," he called back. "Fine. I'm just a bit nervous."

"Nervous?" She had been slouching against the wall, but now she sat up, a little worried. "About what?"

"I don't know," he said. "It's just a feeling, I guess. I've been getting nervous really easily. I'm fine, though. Just… you know. Nervous."

His assurance that he was fine didn't ease Rose's thoughts at all. She knew he was perfectly capable of lying to her, and he probably was. "Do you want me to go in first? I don't mind."

"No, it's fine," he said. "Could you just give me a minute?"

"No problem," Rose said, and began counting to sixty in her head, closing her eyes as she did so. When she reached thirty, she heard a door open and a few steps. The hall was still empty when she opened her eyes, so she decided to take the chance and duck into the little chamber.

It was just as small as James had said it would be, and it was completely empty. There were two doors set into a wall, both of them so small that she would have had to duck to enter, and the one on the left was ajar. She grinned and decided to thank Scorpius, even though she hadn't needed him to give her a hint as to which door she ought to go through. She knew perfectly well how to follow directions.

The door swung open at her touch, and she found only darkness waiting beyond. "Scorpius?" she called. "Are you in there?"

He gave no answer, and again she felt worry biting at her thoughts. He had to be all right. She wouldn't let him get away with being hurt, and she certainly wouldn't let him get away with letting her think he was hurt. She gave him ten seconds to respond, and when he didn't, she pulled out her wand and reached for her knife, just in case, though she kept it carefully still tucked into her sweater. If anything was in there, they would get to see the blade, but until then, she didn't want to worry Scorpius by pulling it out.

"_Lumos_," she said, and the light flaring from the tip of her wand revealed a steep slope downward, like a slide. Rose edged forward, until her toes just peeked over the edge, and leaning a little over, she called, "Scorpius!"

Again, there was no answer that she could hear, but suddenly she was tumbling forward and rolling down the slope. It was all she could do to keep a grip on her wand and not crush it with her body, and for several seconds she was nothing but flailing limbs and gasps of fear and pain as her body struck the wall and scraped against the floors. At first she thought she was going to die, and then she realized that if she was going to die, so would Scorpius, unless he was already dead. But he couldn't be dead, not from something as foolish as falling down a slope, and not so young. If he was too young to study Horcruxes, then he was certainly too young to die.

And what had pulled her down? She hadn't thought she had leaned too far forward, but it had felt like something had caught hold of her through gravity or magic and pulled her down. The same thing must have happened to Scorpius, since he wouldn't be foolish enough to just jump down without even lighting his wand. No one she knew was.

After what felt like at least a minute, the slope began to level out, and eventually Rose rolled to a stop. She lay on the cold floor, gasping, until she felt a pair of hands on her shoulders and bolted up, swinging her wand around to attack whoever was there and reaching for her knife.

It was Scorpius.

She sat up and slid back against the wall. "Are you all right?" she asked, reaching out to take his hand. He got to his feet and pulled her up, and she held out her wand to look around and see where they were. It reminded her of the dungeons but was far less finished, and she wondered if this was what the Chamber of Secrets had been like. "You're not hurt, right?"

"I'm fine," he said, "just a bit bruised. Are you okay?"

"Scraped up, but fine." She held his hand a bit tighter and pulled him along down the passage. "I don't think we can get out of here the way we came. Are you up for an adventure?"

"Sure," he said, but his voice shook a little. A moment later, he whispered, "_Lumos_," and another light joined hers. "Do you know where we are? What did James tell you about this place?" He crept along beside her as they edged down the hall.

"He didn't tell me much," Rose said. He probably hadn't bothered to go down the passage in the first place. "I bet he doesn't know anything about what's down here."

"What are you going to tell him?" Scorpius asked.

"The truth." There wasn't much else she could say, and it would serve him right if he knew what sort of trouble he had gotten her into. He always said that he wanted to protect her, so having put her in danger, even unknowingly, would bother him enough that she probably wouldn't even have to do anything else.

Scorpius nodded. "Do you have any idea how we can get out of here?"

Rose shook her head, but then she was distracted by something else. The further along the passage they went, the more the walls around them changed. It started as the same stone the rest of the castle was made from, but as they went on, Rose noticed that the walls, floor, and even ceiling were changing. Streaks of gold appeared, but when she drew close to them, she realized they weren't gold at all but something else. "What are these?" she murmured, tracing a finger over the metal.

"Orichalcum," Scorpius said, sounding almost breathless.

The name sounded familiar, but Rose couldn't place it. "What's that?"

"A mythical metal. It's said to look exactly like gold but have all the properties of copper." He knelt and touched one of the veins of orichalcum, smiling. "I never thought I would have a chance to actually see it. I always thought it wasn't real, or that it was lost to history."

Rose got to her feet. "Is it possible it's from another world?" She wanted to see where the tunnel led, but she also had to get Scorpius out. Even if he was doing better than he had been at the start of the term and had been ready to explore with her, she didn't want to lead him into danger, and for all she knew, whatever was at the other end of the tunnel would be more dangerous than even the pirates.

She would go on, of course. She had to.

Scorpius got to his feet as well, fresh determination in his eyes, and he took her hand. "I'm with you," he said. "All the way."

Rose couldn't help grinning. "Let's go, then. I want to find out everything I can about this place."

As they continued down the tunnel, Rose decided that there wasn't anyone she would rather have by her side. Ruby was her best friend, and Albus was her favorite cousin, and she knew James would be able to protect her in the unlikely event that she couldn't protect herself, but she felt a bit more secure with Scorpius. Maybe it was just that she finally had someone she felt like she actually had to protect; she was certainly the strong one here, and it felt wonderful.

Or maybe it was just his hand in hers, and the way the wandlight shone on his pale face. Whatever the reason, Rose was glad he was there, and she squeezed his hand, which made Scorpius jump a little, and his cheeks turned pink.

"Good," Rose said, and when Scorpius gave her a confused frown, she explained, "I thought you were going to be pale for the rest of your life."

"It's just my coloring," he said, shrugging, though he had a slight, nervous smile. "I'm always pale."

"Not this pale. I was worried."

He bit his lip. "I didn't mean to make you worry," he said quickly, but Rose shook her head, cutting him off.

"Of course I was going to worry. You're my friend."

Scorpius's cheeks grew even pinker at that, and Rose laughed before pulling him along. She made sure she was the one in front, though; she wouldn't put him in danger, not if there was any chance she could save him. If she had to put herself in danger to keep him safe, then so be it. He would be safe, no matter what.


	12. Friend of a Witch

Rose was holding his hand.

They had found a mysterious cavern, and it was filled with orichalcum, and Rose was holding his hand.

Scorpius couldn't tell which of the three it was, but something made him feel as though he had been filled with light, and he couldn't keep from smiling as he and Rose walked on through the tunnel. He had been frightened at first, and who wouldn't be, from falling down so suddenly where he thought there would only be darkness and a bit of steady ground? He hadn't even thought to grab his wand and light it, as apparently Rose had even before she followed him, and he had to admit, if only to himself, that it was an incredibly embarrassing thing to forget. It was the sort of mistake a first year would make, ad he was nearly done with his third year. It was no wonder she was beating him in every class.

But she was holding his hand, and they were walking side by side, and she didn't even seem to mind when he stepped a bit closer to her. He thought he saw her smiling a little, and that only made him smile more, though his cheeks grew even hotter than they had been earlier.

He had never felt anything quite like this, and he wondered whether it was what love was supposed to feel like. He had loved people, of course – his family and friends – but none of those had felt like this, like a candle had been lit behind his heart and the flame was reaching up to his head even as the wax dripped lower. He'd always thought he had been too busy for crushes on people, and besides, no one would even want to have a Malfoy have a crush on them. It would be like falling in love with some long-lost Riddle. He wondered what Rose would do if he were to lean down and kiss her, just once, on the cheek. She might not mind, and she was already holding hands with him.

But holding hands was very different from kissing, and he didn't want to drive her away by reaching too far. He would rather have her as a friend than lose her completely, so he pressed his lips together and did nothing. It might not even be love; it might simply be a combination of fear and excitement that would have made him want to kiss whoever he was in the tunnel with, even Ruby or Albus.

"Rose?" he said, and he glanced down at her nervously.

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're my friend." It wasn't the confession he had wanted to make, but it was one he knew was true, and so it was the one he had to say.

"I'm glad, too," she said, and beamed at him, which made the candle in his chest flare even brighter, until he was sure it could light the way out of the cavern for them. "And don't worry. I won't let anything happen to you."

"I'm not worried," he said.

"Good," Rose said, and she pulled him along even further. The deeper they went, the more the walls shone with gold. "I'll protect you."

"I'll protect you, too," Scorpius said. He had thought Rose might thank him for that, or smile at him over her shoulder, or maybe, just maybe, turn on her toe and press her lips against his, if only for a moment. He knew it was something of a foolish thing to say, since she was the fighter out of the pair of them, but in that moment, he meant it. He _would _protect her, if the need ever came up.

Rose smiled at him over her shoulder, and as he smiled back, she said, "That's all right, Scorpius. I can protect myself while I'm protecting you." His heart sank at her words, but by then she had already turned her head and was pulling him further along.

Minutes passed, and Scorpius wanted to speak to fill the silence, but he didn't know what he could say. There was nothing to say about his childhood, which would probably seem cold and lonely in comparison to hers. He didn't want to talk about his parents, since he knew both her mother and her father had hated his father. She already knew how his classes were going, and he knew how hers were, and there wasn't much to say about their other friends, since he didn't have many outside their little group, and he wasn't sure how he would feel hearing her chatter about people he didn't know and who would likely hate him. So he remained silent, and apparently Rose didn't feel the need to speak, for she was silent as well.

It would have been a dreary walk except for the orichalcum and the light reflecting off of it. Whenever the silence felt too heavy on his tongue, he would look around the tunnel and marvel at the golden surroundings. With every step there was a little more, and in about an hour, there was no trace of the stone at all. Everything was orichalcum, and a shiver ran down Scorpius's spine, though he couldn't explain why.

"Maybe we should turn back," he said, slowing a little. Again Rose looked over her shoulder, but this time she looked concerned.

"Why? Did you see a turn we could have taken?"

"No," he said, but glanced behind them anyway, just in case. There was nothing at all, only a straight line.

"Then why do you want to go back?" She stopped walking and stepped closer to him. "Is something wrong?" Her smile had vanished, and he wanted to make it return, but he couldn't get rid of the dreadful feeling that there was something very wrong.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm just nervous." He looked past her, but there was nothing he could see except for more of the same.

"I'll protect you," Rose said again. "Come on. If anything tries to hurt you, I'll light it on fire." She pulled him along, holding his hand tighter than before. He didn't mind at all and gripped her hand as tightly as he could. In his other hand, he held his wand, and as they walked on, he hoped Rose didn't mind that his palm was sweating.

With every step, Scorpius's feeling of unease grew, and he stepped a bit closer to Rose. He wanted to turn back, but he couldn't say why. Rose looked nervous as well, and she bit her lower lip as they went on. "Do you think we're still under the castle?" he asked. "Have we gone too far?"

"I don't know," Rose paused and looked behind them. "I don't think we can get up the slide, though." She bit her lip again. "We can either go on or call for help."

"How would we call for help, though?" Scorpius asked. Apollo wasn't down there, and neither was Rose's owl, and even if they were, he didn't have parchment or a quill to write down a message. "I'm not sure I can shout loud enough to reach the floor we were on." Rose might be able to, but even then, it was possible that no one would hear them.

"I've got an idea, but I'm not sure if it'll work. I've never been able to do it. I only know what my mom told me about it." She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and yelled, "_Expecto patronum!"_

Nothing happened. Rose shouted the incantation again, even louder, but only a wisp of silver came out of her wand. It drifted for a while in front of them before vanishing. "Was that the message?" Scorpius asked when Rose opened her eyes, but as her shoulders slumped in disappointment, he realized that it couldn't have been. "What was that?"

"A Patronus Charm," she said. "You're supposed to think of your happiest memory, and it calls up a Patronus, a sort of protector. It protects you from Dementors, but it can also send messages. I just don't know how to make it work properly." She bit her lip again. "I don't know why I can't! My Uncle Harry could make a full-formed Patronus when he was my age, and I'm even better with spells than he was."

His happiest memory. Scorpius wasn't sure he could think of one, but then he looked at Rose and realized it was when she had first told him she was his friend. He didn't know which to pick, so he just thought about all the times he'd felt close to her, and he thought about Albus stealing food for him from the Great Hall when he had overslept, and about Ruby joining him in the train compartment during his first year and deciding right then that they were friends. He felt light and warm, and a smile spread over his face as he raised his wand and said, "_Expecto patronum!"_

Nothing happened. If he squinted, he thought he could see a bit of silver mist, but it faded even more quickly than Rose's had. His heart sank, and he sighed.

"That wasn't too bad for your first try," Rose said. "Next time, maybe you just need a happier memory."

"I haven't got anything happier," he said before he could stop himself, and Rose flung her arms around him, pressing her chin against his shoulder. He hugged her back, and they stood there for a while, staring at the golden walls.

After a while, Rose let go of him and led him down the hall again. "It looks like we'll have to get out on our own," she said.

"Are you sure we can get out?" Maybe the tunnel led on forever, or maybe it opened someplace so far from Hogwarts that they would have no chance of getting back to the school. The weather had started to warm, but it wasn't so warm yet that they could walk for miles without coats and gloves. Even with magical fires, they might freeze before they made it back to the school.

"Of course I am," Rose said. "My uncle's expecting a letter from me, and you have to tell Zahradnik about this place. We can't just leave them unsatisfied, can we?" She smiled, and he had to smile back. "Exactly. So we're going to get out. I won't let us die in here."

The unsettling feeling had faded somewhat, or perhaps it was just easier to ignore with Rose talking and with the attempted Patronuses, but now it returned in full force. He didn't want to go forward, but they couldn't go back. Even Rose looked affected by whatever it was that he felt, and she soon stood so close to him that their shoulders nearly touched.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'm just a bit nervous. This place gives me the creeps."

That was a mild way of saying it, but Scorpius had to agree. Maybe if he thought it was just creepy, then it wouldn't reach him as strongly.

He was about to tell Rose that maybe he was just too sensitive about everything when the floor dropped out from under his feet. Rose said something, and he tried to respond, but then the world twisted around him, and everything went dark.

* * *

><p>"Scorpius? Scorpius, are you okay?"<p>

He was lying somewhere soft and warm, and somewhere above him, Albus was shouting. His wand was still in his hand, but the other was empty, and that was what made him force his eyes open. Rose was gone.

"Scorpius!" Albus jumped back as Scorpius tried to get up, but he ran forward again as Scorpius tried to get out of bed. His legs didn't seem to be working right, and the floor pitched under his feet, nearly making him fall. Albus caught him and eased him back to the bed, asking, "What happened? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Scorpius said, though he felt dizzy and wanted to lie down again and throw a blanket over his head. "Where's Rose?"

"Rose?" Albus frowned. "Why? What's wrong?"

Scorpius shook his head. There wasn't any time to explain. "I have to find her." He lunged off the bed again, and this time Albus helped him, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling one of Scorpius's arms over his shoulders.

"Where should we start looking?" Albus asked. "Where did you last see her?"

"I don't know," Scorpius said. "There was a secret passage, and it went out, away from the castle, and then –"

"What's going on?" Franny Morgenstern, a long-nosed fifth year with several tattoos who had somehow become a Prefect stood just outside their dormitory. "I heard shouting, and Neil's not anywhere around, so I thought I'd handle it." She caught sight of Scorpius draped on Albus, and her blue eyes went wide. "Does he need to get to the Hospital Wing?"

"I'm fine," Scorpius said quickly, though he wasn't sure if he was fine at all. "Really, Morgenstern, I'll be all right." He hoped she believed him, since he didn't want to just send Albus out on his own to find Rose.

"You'd better be," Morgenstern said, setting her hands on her hips. "I've gone through this whole year with only the first years getting into trouble, and I don't want to ruin that now. Understand?"

Albus nodded and pulled Scorpius out of the common room, walking so quickly that Scorpius stumbled over his own feet several times. He looked more serious than Scorpius had ever seen him, and older as well. As soon as they were out of the common room and in the hall, where no one else could hear them, Albus turned to Scorpius and asked, "What happened to Rose? Is she in any danger?"

Scorpius shook his head but then said, "I don't know." He told Albus what he could remember of his exploration with Rose, even though the last few minutes felt fuzzy and indistinct. Albus's jaw was set throughout the story, and Scorpius stammered a bit when he realized that he looked almost exactly like a younger version of James. He reached the point where his memory failed him, just after the attempted Patronus Charms, and when Albus said nothing, he decided to go on. "It must have been a portal, but I don't think I'm in another world. I just wound up in my bed."

"Then maybe it sets you wherever you need to go," Albus said, and he pulled Scorpius along again. "In that case, Rose should be in Gryffindor Tower."

"How would you know that?" Scorpius asked.

"I don't. It's just a guess, but it's the only idea I have." Albus walked a bit faster, apparently not noticing that Scorpius was still having trouble getting his feet under him. "Can you think of anything better?"

He could barely think at all, so he just shook his head. "Gryffindor Tower, then," he said, hoping he could make it up all the stairs.

As it turned out, he didn't have to. On the stairs headed to the fourth floor, they found Rose, who practically flew down to meet them. She crashed into Scorpius in the most ferocious hug he had ever encountered, and only grabbing hold of Albus's wrist and Albus grabbing hold of the railing kept both him and Rose from tumbling down the stairs in a heap. "You're all right," she gasped, holding him tightly, and Scorpius held her just as tightly with the arm that wasn't stretched out and holding Albus. "Scorpius, I was so worried. I thought you were still in there, so I was going to find Zahradnik and get some help." She stepped back then, but just enough to look at his face. "You are all right, aren't you?"

"I think so," he said. "Are you?"

She nodded. "A bit dizzy, but I'll be fine. Where did you end up?"

"In my bed," he said.

"I was there too," she said quickly. "Well, my bed, not yours, but you probably noticed that." She released him and grabbed his other hand so both she and Albus could pull him up the stairs. "There must be a portal down there, though I don't know why it would put us in our beds instead of some other world."

"I thought it was sending you to wherever you belonged," Albus said, and Rose nodded thoughtfully as they all sat at the top of the stairs. Scorpius still held both their hands, and he leaned against Albus. Rose leaned against him, and Albus ended up leaning against the wall.

"That makes sense," Rose said, "but I'll have to investigate it to find out if that's what it really is. It could be something completely different." She sat up suddenly, and Scorpius wondered how she kept her head from spinning with the quick movement. "Scorpius, you'll have to ask Zahradnik about it."

"Why me?" Scorpius asked. "You could go to her just as easily. I told you the password to her office."

"But you're her favorite," Rose said, as though that settled everything. "You're the one who should go, and then you can tell the rest of us what she says."

"I never claimed to be her favorite," Scorpius said, though he wasn't sure why he was arguing.

"You're the one who goes there all the time," Albus said.

"And I don't think anyone else could get away with talking about Horcruxes," Rose said. She got to her feet. "That's settled, then. Let us know, all right? I'll be in the library." She took off down the stairs, and Scorpius watched her leave, feeling a strange ache in his chest.

Albus sighed. "You can't argue with her either, huh? Do you want to go see the headmistress now?"

Scorpius shook his head. "I'll go tomorrow. Right now I just want to sleep."


	13. Speaking

There was a lot to do before finals, and Rose wasn't sure how she would be able to fit everything into her schedule. She had to study, of course, at least to remember everything from the year, but she could take care of that with her friends. None of them complained that they were studying earlier than they had the year before, and she supposed that was because of the extra classes they were taking.

"Sixth year," Albus said one day in April, when they took a break from reviewing History of Magic. "We just have to make it to sixth year, and then we get free hours."

"Which we'll spend in the library," Scorpius said. He'd been sounding tired lately, and Rose hadn't had the chance to ask him if he had told Zahradnik about the tunnel. He probably had, but then, she would have thought he would tell them about what he had learned, and so far, that hadn't come up at all.

"Well, naturally," Ruby said. "We're all such good friends that we wouldn't even want to spend a few minutes apart." She grinned at them and turned the page of her notes. "Okay, Albus's turn. Who was the first witch to record how she escaped the Salem trials?"

In between study sessions, Rose also found time to fly out over the river. She never saw Thomas on her flights – she barely saw him at all anymore, except at meals and sometimes in the common room – but that didn't bother her one bit. The less time she had to spend around him, the better, and so she relished her solo flights above the lake. It was hard to tell, but she thought the orichalcum-filled tunnel had led directly beneath the river, and if whatever had sent her and Scorpius to their beds was a portal, then it would almost explain everything. She continued her scouting missions, but by late May, she had decided she wouldn't learn anything more, and that it was time to corner Scorpius.

Such a thing was more easily thought of than accomplished. Unless they were with everyone else, he seemed to vanish, and she couldn't manage to track him down. Albus was no help, since apparently he couldn't find Scorpius either, and she refused to ask James, who still seemed to think that Scorpius was his enemy.

"Just leave him alone," Albus said the fifth time Rose asked him for help. "If he wants to be on his own, there's probably a good reason. You'll find him when he's ready to be found."

Rose wasn't willing to give up, but she could tell that Albus wouldn't back down, either. "You're more stubborn than I thought," she said, and headed off to look for Scorpius on her own. She would search the whole castle if she had to, even break into the Slytherin Common Room. There had to be someone who would help her.

As it turned out, she didn't need help. She found Scorpius on her own, as she passed by an empty classroom. She would have kept walking, but then she heard a sigh and decided to peek through the door, which was ajar. She saw Scorpius lying on his back on the professor's desk, staring up at the ceiling. His legs dangled off the end of the desk, and one of his arms was limp as well. The other lay across his stomach, and it rose and fell with each of his sighs. He looked like some brooding poet, and if he hadn't seemed so melancholy, Rose would have laughed. Instead, she slipped inside and closed the door.

At the sound, Scorpius lifted his head up off the desk. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Hi," she said, hopping onto one of the students' desks and swinging her legs back and forth. "It's good to see you, too. I've been well, thanks for asking, and yourself?"

Scorpius, apparently, wasn't in the mood to be cheered up, and he laid his head down again with another sigh. Rose's heart sank, but only for a moment. In the next, she jumped off the desk and strode over to him, putting her hands on her hips and glaring. Scorpius sighed again. "I'm fine," he said. "I just want to be left alone."

"You look like you're sulking," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he snapped. "I'm not sulking. I just want to be on my own for a while." When Rose wouldn't leave, he sat up and scooted over to give her some room. "I've been thinking."

"About what?"

He shook his head. "I'd rather not talk about it right now. I want to wait until I've figured it out for myself."

"Okay." She couldn't exactly fault him for that, but she could pester him every few days for details, and that might give him time to be more amenable to the idea of being pestered. "Let's talk about something else, then."

"Like what?"

"Have you talked to Zahradnik yet?"

Scorpius smiled a little. "You're incorrigible, aren't you? No, I haven't. I haven't had the time, and neither has she."

Something about the way he'd said _incorrigible _made Rose wonder what they would have been like if they had gone to a Muggle school together, in some other universe. They probably would have been the two most annoying students possible, the ones that would memorize poems to show off to each other and challenge each other to pick words in the dictionary and work them into conversations. She would win every time, of course, but he would put up a good fight and be a worthy adversary.

She wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

Before Rose could figure out where that thought had come from, someone screamed. At once, she sprang off the desk and ran to the door, slipping her wand from her sleeve. Scorpius was right behind her, but she held out her arm to keep him back. "Stay in here," she said. "You'll be safe."

"You don't even know if there's anything wrong," Scorpius said, but he looked pale and didn't move. There was another scream, from someone else, and he set a hand on her shoulder. "I'm going with you. I know I'm not as strong a fighter, but I want to help. I think I can help. Just give me a chance. Please, Rose."

"Okay," she said. "But just stay close."

"Got it."

She pulled open the door, and they raced into the hall.

As they sprinted together, Rose decided that she needn't be so worried. It wasn't like anything was going to happen to them. Nothing bad had happened at all, not even when Albus had been brought into that other world by Avina's spell. She had almost been taken by pirates just last year, but that had worked out just fine for everyone, except perhaps the pirates. And even just a few months ago, in the passage that she had soundly berated James about, she and Scorpius had come out fine. There was no reason for them not to be fine now.

They rounded a corner, and Rose nearly tripped over the prone body of a short, tan man with gray hair that stuck out in every direction. She managed to recover, and Scorpius knelt beside him. "Professor?" he called. "Professor Duffy? Are you all right?"

"Do you know him?" Rose asked, looking up and down the hall. There was no sign of what had happened, and she wondered if she ought to run off to Madame Longbottom. She couldn't leave Scorpius, though, so that would have to wait. The hall seemed slightly chilled, and she shivered as she waited for her friend's answer.

"He's the Ancient Runes professor," Scorpius said. "Or, he was. He's dead." He looked up, stricken. "I don't know what happened. There isn't any blood. He's just… cold."

Another chill ran down Rose's spine, but this time she knew exactly what had caused it. "Come on," she said, grabbing Scorpius's hand. "We need to get to Zahradnik now. She has to hear about this."

"But – but –" Scorpius stumbled as Rose pulled him up, but she held tightly to his hand as they ran down the hall. "Are we really going to just leave him there?"

"We have to." More than that, she wanted to. She'd only known Duffy through reputation, but that didn't matter. He could have been a stranger or her favorite professor, and she still would have wanted to leave him. He was dead, and something about seeing him lying so still and cold – and he was cold, no doubt, if her guess was right – unnerved her. She had never seen a dead body before, and she had never wanted to, and now running was the only thing that made her feel like she wouldn't throw up or just sit down and cry.

"There isn't anything we can do," Scorpius said. "My dad sometimes has to deal with this. People he can't save. He hates it, but he knows he can't obsess over it." His voice shook and cracked, and Rose pulled him along faster. He couldn't cry, because then she might start to cry, and she didn't cry. Not ever.

There was one good thing about this: she knew what had caused it. She knew what she had to tell Zahradnik.

Rose heard another scream, then another, but both had come from different places. "No," she whispered, stumbling to a stop. "No, this can't be possible."

"What is it?" Scorpius asked. "What's wrong?"

"There's two of them. Maybe more." She turned in a circle but saw nothing. If she kept Scorpius with her, they might both wind up walking into danger, but if she sent him away, she wouldn't be able to protect him. Her hand tightened around his. "We need to get to Zahradnik's office now. Which way?"

"Follow me."

He led her at a run, down the hall and to the stairs, which they took two at a time. Rose was afraid she might tumble, but her feet landed solidly on the next floor, and they were running again. Every time she heard someone scream, her instinct was to race to help them, but she had to keep moving. It was something she couldn't obsess over, but that was harder than Scorpius had made it sound. "You tell Zahradnik," she said as they whipped around a corner. "When we reach her office, I'm going to help people, so you'll have to tell her."

"Tell her what?" Scorpius asked, sounding almost panicked. "Rose, I don't understand –"

"It's the cold thing," she said. "It's what attacked Essemeulia and what the pirates were so afraid of." Did Zahradnik know the pirates had been afraid? She couldn't remember, but it didn't matter now. "I'll get you there, and you tell her."

"What are you going to do?" Scorpius asked.

"I'm going to protect people." She wasn't sure how, but there had to be some spell she knew that could help. After all, she knew more spells than any other third year; one of them would be useful.

She had a chance to find out much sooner than she had expected. As Scorpius led her up another flight of stairs, Rose felt the air grow chilled again. Before they could turn back, the thing slid down the hall, and though it had no eyes that she could see, she knew it could tell they were there. She didn't know how she knew – a prickle on the back of her neck or the sense of a sparrow facing a snake – but her breath caught in her throat and she raised her wand, stepping in front of Scorpius.

"Run," she whispered.

"Absolutely not," Scorpius said. "I won't leave you."

"You don't have a choice," she snapped. He was infuriating, but she had to keep him safe. "I won't let you be in danger. Run, and tell Zahradnik. There's another way to reach her office, isn't there?" There almost had to be; there were multiple ways to almost everywhere in the school.

"I don't know," Scorpius said. "I've only ever been that one way." He gripped her hand even tighter. "Run. Please. You can fight while we escape."

Of course she could. She didn't know why she hadn't thought of that, but as soon as Scorpius mentioned it, it sounded completely rational. "Right," she said, "but you go first." Her thoughts were full of the spells she had picked up from her parents, Uncle Harry, and James, and she swung her wand forward, shouting the first one that came to mind. "_Stupefy!_"

Nothing happened, and Rose stumbled backward, nearly falling backward. If Scorpius hadn't caught her, she would have gone backwards down the stairs. "_Expecto patronum!"_ Scorpius yelled, and again, nothing happened. A bit of silver mist floated over her shoulder, but it dissipated without having any effect. Rose pushed Scorpius just enough to get him moving, and together they ran down the stairs and through the hall, Scorpius once again in the lead, even though he didn't look to have any more knowledge of where they were going than Rose did.

Rose had never been lost in Hogwarts, but there were so many different halls that she couldn't have explored all of them, not while having time both to keep on top of every class and to have her own time to study. Scorpius looked more at home in the little passages and hidden halls, and Rose decided to trust him without questioning. She followed him easily, but every time she looked over her shoulder, she could still see the thing behind them and still feel the cold reaching out to her.

"_Impedimenta! Expelliarmus! Incendio!_"

Nothing had any effect, and shooting fire at the thing only seemed to make it move faster. "It's still there?" Scorpius asked as he pulled her up a flight of stairs. Rose was completely relying on him to know where they were going, since most of the time, her gaze was directed behind them.

"Yeah," she gasped. There had to be some other spell she could use.

"How's it following us?"

She shook her head, not caring that he couldn't see her. "Maybe it can follow our thoughts, or smell us, or…" The cold brushed against her skin as it drew closer, and she gasped, her eyes going wide. The thought that struck her was terrible but wonderful, and if her life hadn't been in immediate danger, she would have been thrilled.

"Or what?"

"Heat. It's following our heat." She knew there was Muggle technology that could see heat, and some snakes could sense the heat of mice and hunt them that way, but she hadn't thought such a thing could be a creature's main way of tracking its prey. "That's why it sped up when I shot fire at it."

"Can you hide our heat?" Scorpius asked. "Make an ice wall behind us or something?"

"I don't know." For all she knew, there was a spell for that, but she hadn't learned it. When she returned to the library, that would be the first thing she looked up.

Scorpius sounded almost like he was about to cry as he asked, "Isn't there anything you can do?" Rose wanted to comfort him, but she couldn't think of anything to do but save his life. That would have to be close enough.

"Yeah," she said, and let go of his hand. "I can give you a little time."

"Rose, what are you doing?" Scorpius asked, and she was sure that if she looked back at him, she would see tears in his eyes.

"I'm making sure you get to Zahradnik's office." She pointed her wand up and beyond the creature. "_Incendio!_" Flames shot from the tip of her wand, and the creature drew closer to her before leaping in the direction of the fire, up and away from the pair, almost defying gravity. Rose's breath caught in her throat as she wondered how that could be possible, but there was no time for her to figure that out now. "Scorpius, run!"

"Be careful," he said, but then she heard footsteps behind her, speeding away. He was gone before she realized that she ought to warn him to light his own fires if anything drew close to him. But he was clever. He could figure it out on his own.

She hoped he could, in any case.

"_Incendio! Incendio!_"

The fires urged the creature down the hall, away from her, but whenever Rose turned to run after Scorpius, it would come after her. She couldn't tell whether the stones were still hot from the fire, so it was a toss-up between whether it could also sense motion or whether her own heat simply became greater than what was left from the fire.

"_Incendio!_"

Flames danced around the hall, but there was no smoke, because they took up no fuel but magic. They didn't last very long, though, and she couldn't tell whether that was because she wasn't strong enough in practical magic or that was simply how the spell worked. Most of her work had been theoretical, and she decided that over the next summer she would get in as much proper spellwork as she could. Someone had to be willing to teach her. If she could convince one of her parents how important it was that she know how to actually cast spells and not just read about them.

In the next moment, she didn't know what had happened, but her throat seemed to close up and everything went cold around her. She screamed, but the only sound that came out was a hoarse gasp.

Someone was shouting, and Rose felt a surge of heat somewhere above her, but it couldn't break through the cold. Deep inside her was a little core of warmth, and she retreated there, waiting for the chill to leave.


	14. Home

Scorpius ran. Behind him, he could hear Rose shouting spells, but her voice faded as he raced along. He still wasn't entirely sure how he would reach Professor Zahradnik's office, but as he ran past the Charms classroom, he thought he could think of another path to take, as long as one of those things wasn't anywhere near him. He didn't know what they were, and for the first time, he didn't want to know. He only wanted to be safe.

Any sort of movement out of the corner of his eye made him jump, even a spider scuttling along a wall. When someone grabbed his arm from behind, Scorpius screamed and swung his wand around, trying to think of some spell that might be useful. He stopped when he saw that it was only James Potter, but by then the sixth year had slammed him against the wall. "What are you doing up here, Malfoy?"

"I need to reach Professor Zahradnik," Scorpius gasped. "Let me go! Rose –"

"Where's Rose?" James snarled, slamming Scorpius against the wall again, this time hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.

"Fighting," Scorpius said, struggling to draw in a breath. One of James's arms was frighteningly close to his throat. "She said she'd protect me so I could warn everyone."

"We already know," James said. "Everyone getting gathered in the Great Hall. You'd better get down there, if you know what's good for you." He released Scorpius then, and Scorpius took a few running steps down the passage before he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "What about you?"

"I'm going to save Rose."

Before James could take more than three steps, Professor Longbottom burst into the hall. "James, Scorpius. You're alive." He looked pale and anxious, the scars on his face standing out. "Get down to the Great Hall quickly. James, look after Scorpius. I don't want either of you going through the halls alone. It's too dangerous."

"But sir, I have to find Rose!" James said, and for the first time Scorpius could remember, the older boy didn't look cruel. He looked even more worried than Professor Longbottom, and if Scorpius had been able to catch his breath, he might have felt sorry for him.

"I'll find her," Professor Longbottom said. "You and Scorpius need to get to the Great Hall."

"Fine," James said, and he grabbed Scorpius's arm and dragged him through the passage and down several flights of stairs. The older boy moved quickly, and Scorpius didn't have the breath to ask him to slow down. He could only follow and try to keep up, all the while looking over his shoulder to see whether Professor Longbottom had found Rose and was catching up to them. The hallways behind them were empty, except for once, when they drew closer, and a creature lunged at them. Scorpius screamed, and James shoved him away, stepping forward to shield him.

"What are you doing?" Scorpius gasped, stumbling away.

"Protecting you," James said. He rolled up his sleeves and slipped into a dueling stance, a wild, almost feral grin on his face. "Get moving, Malfoy, before I regret this."

"Come with me," Scorpius said. He couldn't let Rose's cousin be hurt, no matter what the older boy had done to him.

"Not a chance," James said. "Rose isn't going to be the bravest one in this family. Run!"

Scorpius took a few running steps away, but then he stopped and called, "Use fire! Rose managed to distract it with fire. The spell was _incendio_."

"I know how to light a fire," James said, but his grin looked a bit friendlier, and Scorpius returned the smile before racing into the Great Hall. It was guarded by professors, but they allowed him through.

"James Potter is out there," he said, his breath nearly back to normal. "He's fighting one of the creatures."

"Don't worry," Professor Zahradnik said. "We'll save him." Without waiting for any backup, she charged out, shouting spells even before she had left the Great Hall. Once she had gone, Professor Baumhauer set an arm around Scorpius's shoulders and led him to the Slytherin table, where most of the rest of his house had gathered.

"Are you all right, Scorpius?" he asked.

Scorpius nodded. "I think so." He wasn't physically hurt, in any case, except for his back, where it had hit the wall. "Professor Duffy's dead."

Professor Baumhauer nodded solemnly. "I was afraid of that, when he didn't arrive with the rest of us. Don't worry, though. All the professors are fighting, and the seventh years are arranging for the students to escape if it looks like we'll have to leave the castle."

"Do you think that will happen?" Scorpius asked. The last thing he wanted was to leave, but he couldn't stay in Hogwarts if it was this dangerous.

"I hope not," Professor Baumhauer said. He clapped Scorpius on the shoulder and turned to leave, but Scorpius grabbed the man's sleeve, suddenly remembering what he had been meant to tell Professor Zahradnik.

"Tell the headmistress that the things can sense heat," he said. "That's how they track prey."

Professor Baumhauer nodded and took off at a run.

"Scorpius!"

The sudden shout alarmed him, as did the arms that grabbed him and pulled him a bit away from the table, but not so far that he couldn't pick out the nervous conversations. It took him a moment to recognize Albus, and then to manage a smile that he hoped was reassuring, though he couldn't keep his hands from shaking. Albus, his closest friend, who probably still didn't know that his cousin and older brother were still fighting in the halls outside.

"Are you all right?" Albus asked. "Were you hurt? I can get Madame Longbottom to help. She's over with the Hufflepuffs now, but I bet I could get her over here quickly."

"I'm fine," Scorpius said, and he wondered how long his mind had been wandering. "Are you all right?"

Albus nodded. "Ruby's okay, too. She's with the Ravenclaws right now, but I snuck over to see her a bit before you came in. We've both been really worried. Rose was worried about you before, but –" Albus's voice broke off, and he turned so pale that for a moment Scorpius thought he might pass out.

"What's wrong?" Scorpius asked, and when Albus wouldn't answer, he turned to look to the double doors, following Albus's gaze.

Professor Zahradnik had returned, helping James to walk in. He was pale and shaking, but as soon as he caught sight of Albus, he broke away from the headmistress and raced through the crowds to reach his brother. Albus looked just as surprised by the hug he received as Scorpius was, and James clung to Albus as though he had just pulled his younger brother from drowning in the lake. After a moment, he released him, said simply, "I was worried."

"I was, too," Albus said. "Are you okay?"

James nodded. "It got me a bit, but I think I managed. If Zahradnik hadn't shown up when she did, though…" He shuddered, then forced a grin onto his face. "Here, feel how cold my hand still is." He pressed it against the back of Albus's neck and laughed when Albus yelped.

"Shouldn't you go see Madame Longbottom?" Albus asked, pulling away from James and rubbing the back of his neck to warm it again.

"I'm fine," James said, but his grin slipped a little. "You worry too much, kid. Besides, I would have been fine, even if Zahradnik hadn't shown up. Your friend gave me a tip that helped out a lot, and I was getting the hang of how to use it." He smiled at Scorpius, and Scorpius managed to smile back. "Doesn't mean we're friends, though, Malfoy. It just means you're not as bad as I thought." Despite the words, his tone was almost gentle, and Scorpius thought that maybe, in time, they would become friends.

He had almost managed to relax when the double doors opened again, and this time the Great Hall fell completely silent. Professor Longbottom had entered, and in his arms he held a still figure with a pair of bright red braids that swung with each step.

_Rose,_ Scorpius tried to say, but it was as though his throat had swelled shut. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even breathe. Someone was trying to get his attention behind him, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from Rose. Maybe if he leaned closer he would be able to see whether she was still breathing. Maybe if he leaned closer she would still be alive. Maybe…

His knees buckled, and the world went dark.

* * *

><p>Scorpius would later learn that he spent a whole day unconscious in the Hospital Wing, and the first time he woke he wouldn't stop screaming until someone poured a sleeping potion down his throat. The second time he woke – which he thought was the first – he felt as though his head had been filled with several pounds of feathers. He lay in a bed that wasn't his own, and somewhere else in the room, people were talking. Their words drifted in and out of his thoughts, and after a while, he fell asleep again, only to have vaguely disturbing dreams that he only half-remembered.<p>

In the days that followed, he would hear bits of stories about how brave and helpful various people had been. James Potter had carried him to the Hospital Wing. Professor Baumhauer had apparently single-handedly saved all the Slytherin first years. Another Slytherin, Robyn Noel, had brought several students into the Room of Requirement but hadn't survived the last journey. The girl she had been trying to bring, a Gryffindor named Kris McEwan, had run the rest of the way, battling and dodging creatures until she had made it to the Room of Requirement and from there to the Hog's Head. After that, she had run to the post office and sent an owl to the Ministry. A team of Aurors had Apparated to Hogwarts, and with their help, the creatures were rounded up and destroyed.

There was a list of the dead posted outside the Hospital Wing, along with a list of the wounded and their conditions, and Scorpius would often go there and read both. Most of the names didn't mean much to him, but sudden memories would spring to his mind when he looked over the lists. Philippa Taggart, who had died, had always given him a little smile. Katherine Aritza, who was alive but moved to St. Mungo's, had a pretty accent and would hex anyone who said it was Spanish rather than Basque. James Potter was listed as wounded, but not for long, and soon he was released, though Scorpius was never able to track him down.

What he would look for most was Rose's name, though her condition never changed, no matter how many times he read it and traced his finger over the words, hoping that might somehow erase them and bring up something more hopeful. It was always the same, though: _Rose Granger-Weasley: Critical condition, severely injured, moved to St. Mungo's._

In the days to come, he would see the castle slowly empty as parents came to collect their children or children got on the train from Hogsmeade to head home for King's Cross. Albus and James were among the first to leave, barely giving Scorpius a chance to say good-bye before they raced off. Ruby stayed, saying she had written a letter home saying she was fine so her parents wouldn't worry. Scorpius stayed as well, writing to his own parents that he was all right and would be fine with waiting if that was easier for them. Carefully worded letters went back and forth, and finally it was decided that he would stay at Hogwarts, though it didn't ease his loneliness as much as he had hoped it might.

He would have nightmares that woke him, screaming, though in the morning he always claimed not to remember them. When the other remaining Slytherins told him that he needed to get a sleeping potion, he didn't go to the Hospital Wing but went to the Ravenclaw Common Room to speak with Ruby. He answered the riddle, and before he could say another word, Ruby told him to move into the tower, since all the other Ravenclaws had left. He gathered his things, and the two of them had sleepovers in the common room that were full of forced cheer. Scorpius still woke screaming in the middle of the night, but Ruby never complained. She never even spoke about them.

The days until the last train took him to King's Cross and to his parents were tense and fearful, but Scorpius didn't know a thing about that when he woke and realized he was in the Hospital Wing. Albus sat beside him, and Ruby's head was on his shoulder. She woke when Albus nudged her but didn't smile.

"How's Rose?" Scorpius asked.

Albus looked away, shaking, and Ruby bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."

Scorpius wished the world could go dark again.

* * *

><p>Going home had all the anticipation of Christmas Eve but with the dread of being sure there would be some terrible accident. Scorpius fretted all the way to King's Cross, biting his knuckles and staring out the window at the passing English countryside. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that the train would crash and everyone would be killed, or that the creatures would attack again, or that his parents wouldn't be there at all and he would either have to find his own way to Malfoy Manor or move in with someone else. But Ruby would already be gone, since they hadn't shared a compartment, and he would be completely on his own.<p>

At the Hogsmeade station, Ruby had asked whether he wanted to sit with her in her compartment, but he only shook his head. At the time, he had wanted to be alone. His thoughts felt as though they were going to tear something inside him to pieces, and he hadn't wanted anyone to see him. If he was going to fall apart, it would be in private, so he could put himself back together before anyone knew what had happened.

The lady with the trolley rapped on the door to his compartment, and Scorpius jumped before shrinking lower in his seat and burying his head in his knees. After a while, he heard the rattling of the trolley's wheels as the woman moved on, but he still didn't rise. Maybe if he stayed curled up tight, the train ride would be over quicker and he could just get home.

Or maybe it would last forever and he would never have to go home. He still didn't know which he would prefer.

Hours passed, and Scorpius fell asleep with his cheek pressed against the window. His dreams weren't all about the creature and Rose anymore. Some were about James, and one had been about Ruby, but this one was about a tall man with wings made of shadows and eyes that were completely purple, with neither sclera nor pupil. He bent over Scorpius and stuck his hand into Scorpius's chest. The dream ended just as Scorpius felt his soul being drained away, and he managed to keep from screaming only by remembering that, if he did, people would likely burst into the compartment to make sure he was all right.

He reconsidered his thoughts about being alone. At least with company, he would have a reason not to fall asleep. Perhaps he ought to head out and find Ruby to see if she still wanted his company. If she didn't, though, he would have to slink back to his own compartment, and he would feel more alone than before.

The decision ended up being inconsequential, since the train reached King's Cross before he could make it. He spotted his parents standing on the platform, and with a sinking heart, he gathered up his things and headed out.

As soon as he stepped off the train, his parents ran up to him. "Are you sure you're all right?" his mother asked, taking his suitcases from his hands. They had felt heavier than they had at the start of the year, and he was relieved to have their weight gone. "We could have come to get you if you'd wanted us to."

"It's fine," Scorpius said, though his throat felt tight again. "A friend of mine was staying, and I didn't want her to be lonely." He spoke as quickly as possible, trying not to cry in front of his parents. If he had to cry, he would do it alone, in his room, with the door locked and a Muffling Charm cast so no one would know. He didn't want them to look so worried about him.

"Could we stop by St. Mungo's on the way home, Astoria?" his father asked as they walked to the car. Scorpius trailed behind his parents, but was close enough to hear their conversation. "There's a patient I can't leave for long." He lowered his voice, but Scorpius was still able to pick out the name _Granger-Weasley._

That was all it took to make him stumble to a stop. His parents walked on a while longer before they noticed, but as soon as they saw that he wasn't moving, they ran to his side, asking what was wrong. "She's my friend," Scorpius said, and with that his knees buckled, but the world stayed just as solid and sturdy as it had been the minute before. He hated it for that, and he hated it for being so quiet in the parking lot, and he hated it for letting the cold creatures inside.

For the first time in years, Scorpius cried in his parents' arms.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **And here's the end of Book Three! I know it got pretty dark there at the end, and I'm afraid I'm going on a bit of a hiatus from the Potter-verse to focus on some other projects (mostly _Encryptions and Curses_, another story I've got on this site), but in a month or so, I'll get started on Book Four, which I promise will be longer. Keep an eye out for it; it'll be called Book Four: Long Expected Correspondence.

As always, thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed my work.


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